Topaz, Uris B +

                                         Leon Uris was one of the wonderful novelists to emerge from the WW2 generation.   He was a poor Jewish boy from Baltimore, who joined the Marines at 17 and went on to write many successful books and screenplays. He is most famous for 'Exodus'.  'Topaz' was a 1967 thriller set against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis.  As always, his characters are well drawn, his plotting is intriguing and his historical background information is well researched and accurate.  Here, he provides a very insightful exposition of Franco/American tensions that began during the war and lived on deep into the Cold War.

The Guns at Last Light, Atkinson - A*

                                         This is the third volume of 'The Liberation Trilogy', the author's homage to the U.S. Army and its men in their three theater battle with Germany in World War II.  'An Army at Dawn' told of their start in Africa and won a Pulitzer. 'The Day of Battle' detailed the gruesome, brutal, and under-appreciated campaign in Italy. This is the story of their triumph from D-Day to VE day, at D+335.  As a nation, we remember the perfidy of Pearl Harbor and know the outline of our almost four year battle against Japan, but it is this eleven month tale that we treasure, honor and remember just a bit more. This is the war whose leaders are part of our folklore: Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Smith, Ridgeway, Roosevelt,Taylor, Gavin, Abrams, and McAuliffe. Very few of us know as many names from the Pacific.
                                       From June 6, 1944 right up to the end, the Army was hindered by supply shortages. Men and material were perpetually unavailable. The French port of Cherbourg was destroyed by the Germans and only one of the two Mulberries survived a gale that hit the Channel soon after the landings.  It would not be until Nov. 28, when the Belgian port of Antwerp was liberated by the Canadians, that the Allies had reliable and sufficient dockage on the continent.  Fortunately for us, Hitler kept a twenty-division reserve in the Pas-de-Calais, because that is where they figured the invasion would come. The depth of the Normandy beachhead was only six miles on July 1. Casualties on both sides were at the same ratio as 1917. The breakthrough did not come until July 26. By August 21, the Germans were essentially out of France and headed to the Westwall.                                                            
                                      The U.S. Army actually entered Germany on Sept. 11, but it would take them another six months to breach the Rhine, barely seventy-five miles away. Allied planners had assumed they would not reach the Fatherland until May,1945. They were not prepared for their early success. Again, they simply did not have the supplies to project their strength into Germany. Ammo, food, and winter clothing were lacking. The rainfall along the front in November was triple the annual averages. A brutal winter followed. The fall saw the failure of Market Garden, the slog in the Huertgen Forest, and the repulse that was the Battle of the Bulge. When the Germans initiated their Ardennes offensive on Dec.16, they had a 5:1 advantage in artillery  and a 3:1 in armor.
                                        On Jan. 20th, the Soviets were on the Oder, fifty miles from Berlin, and we were still two months from crossing the Rhine. In addition to supply challenges, there still was not an agreed upon strategy for finishing off the Germans. Monty and Ike battled incessantly (as an American, it certainly appears as if Monty was insufferable).  Monty wanted a British thrust into northern Germany; Ike wanted a massive front with Monty on the north and Bradley in the south. It got so bad that Marshall told the Combined Chiefs that Monty "was an impudent and disloyal subordinate, who treated all American officers with open contempt. "                                                        
                                       Two weeks after the March 7 breach at Remagen, seven Allied Armies crossed the Rhine and entered Germany.  It was pretty much over then as there were few organized forces between the Rhine and the Elbe. We met the Soviets on April 25th, the day they surrounded Berlin.  The Battle of Berlin cost the Soviets three hundred thousand casualties, thus confirming for Ike, his decision to not try for the Reich capital.
                                       "Twelve years after it had began, the Thousand-Year Reich had ended. Humanity would require decades, perhaps centuries, to parse the regime's inhumanity, and to comprehend how a narcissistic beer hall demagogue had wrecked a nation, a continent and nearly a world."
                                        In 1947, the US Army forwarded Quartermaster General Form 345 to the next of kin of 270,000 Americans asking if they wished to have their soldier brought home for interment. Over sixty percent came home on ghost ships carrying over five thousand caskets apiece, which then traveled by rail across the republic.
                                        16,112,566 Americans were in uniform during the war. Demographers forecast that the number will dip below a million in late 2014 and 100,000 in 2024. Shockingly, they expect there will be four hundred veterans alive to see the 90th anniversary of D-Day. Certainly those soon to be centenarians never became devotees of the Luckies, Camels and Chesterfields that were staples in their K-rations.

The English Monster, Shepherd - B-

                                          This is a very well done entertaining novel that links together two disparate stories: England's two-and-a-half century leadership of the slave trade and some frightful murders in the East End in 1811.  However, it's not that black and white, as the monster is (I think) an allegory for the slave trade.  Slavery has been an integral part of man's history.  The trans-Atlantic trade was massive in scale and coincided with Europe's conquest of the Americas.  The English heroes John Hawkyns and Francis Drake partook in it in a ship owned by good Queen Bess.  The author contends that it was the source of profits that grew the empire from a 17th century wannabe to the 19th century master of the universe.  The most descriptive sections of the book, however, are those that deal with the expansion of London, its docks and its trade east of the city and further into the Thames estuary.  He almost has Dickens' touch as he describes the blending of earth and sea east of London.

Looking Good Dead, James - B-

                                         There are currently eight novels in the Roy Grace series and this is my third.  They are police procedural/detective stories set in Brighton, on the English coast. The author is a skilled storyteller, a native of Brighton who adds tons of color, and a devious plotter, but a bit on the dark side. These novels have a violent tinge, not unlike some of the Scottish ones I've come across. In this one, Grace uncovers an internet business specializing in snuff films. Similar to almost every European novel I've read in the last decade, this one goes behind the old Iron Curtain to find some vicious bad guys.

The Night Ranger, Berenson - B

                                         This is the author's ( a former NYTimes reporter) seventh novel about John Wells: Montana boy, Dartmouth grad, Muslim convert, good guy and all around butt-kicker.  To Bernson's credit,  Wells has not remained in the the same time or place. He has evolved from undercover agent in Afghanistan, to national hero, advisor to Presidents, and now, retired from the CIA. Here he is called upon to rescue kidnapped aid workers near the Kenyan-Somalia border. These books are always a great one-day read - what thrillers are all about.

Russia Leaves The War, Kennan - B

                                         "Peace, Land and Bread" was what the Bolsheviks offered the Russian people, but unilateral peace was anathema to the allies of the Entente.  While I was reading the Hardy Boys in 1958, apparently adult America had a taste for nuanced and extremely detailed diplomatic history, as this extraordinary book won the Pulitzer, Francis Parkman, Bancroft and National Book Awards.  It is actually Vol. I of a work called 'Soviet -American Relations 1917-1920'.

                                           Kennan was a superb writer, and here he tells the tale of the US response to the November Revolution, and specifically to the decision to withdraw from the capitalists war.  What is striking is each side's complete lack of understanding of the others' history and culture.  Lenin and Trotsky honestly believed that the workers of the world would throw off their shackles and their governments because they offered the world a chance to end the war.  The Wilson administration (and all the Allies) found it incomprehensible that Russia would not honor its treaty obligations, and kept thinking they could appeal to the Russian people's sense of honor and love of democracy.  The legendary 'Fourteen Points' were a partial response to the Russian Revolution and an attempt to go over the head of the Soviets and speak directly to the Russian people. Kennan summed it up succinctly and critically:"Both Wilson and Lenin had made the mistake of attempting to project their respective ideological images onto the world at large and to seek an international validity for principles that were a product of their own specific environmental and educational backgrounds."          

                                          In early February, at Brest-Litovsk, while delaying so the workers of the world could unite, Trotsky played his famous "no war, no peace" negotiating ploy on the Germans.  It totally backfired as the Germans advanced toward Petrograd, which led to the permanent removal of the government to Moscow and the Allie's embassies decamping to Vologda.  Preposterously, the Allies seriously considered intervening in Vladivostok, nearly 6000 miles away. Their stated concern was the fear that the supplies they had sent to Russia, which were on the piers and in the warehouses of Vladivostok because Czarist and Revolutionary Russia were incapable of moving them west, might fall into the hands of the Germans.   The British and French wanted the Japanese to intervene, to deny the enemy "the vast agricultural resources east of Lake Baikal".  You have to wonder if the decision makers had access to maps or were just delusional about transport capabilities. The US prevailed upon the Japanese to defer.  As the sequel is called 'The Decision To Intervene', I suspect we will read more about the attraction of boots on the ground in Siberia.  Back in the west, the Germans  prevailed and the Treaty was signed in  March.  While the Treaty was being considered by a Soviet assembly, Wilson again tried to speak directly to the Russian people.  Kennan acerbically closes the book with, "Once again, as is is so often the course of these rapidly moving events, Washington - troubled, hesitant, and ill-informed  - had spoken, reluctantly, into the past". Kudos to Greg Weiss for finding this challenging book and recommending it.

The Legend of Broken, Carr - C

                                         Undoubtedly, I saw the author's name and downloaded the book without reading the  Times review. That is a habit I need to break.  This book is a science fiction/fantasy presented in the cloak of a history of a portion of northern Germany late in the first millennium. There is even correspondence from Edward Gibbon introducing it to Edmund Burke as a recent (1790's) find of a manuscript.  If you think you might wish to try it, the Wall St. Journal review recommends that you not only read all 651 pages, but the 80 pages of notes.

Savage Continent, Lowe - B+

                                         At long last we have a thorough, continent-wide treatment of the chaos that was Europe in the aftermath of WW2.  The Germans may have surrendered in the first week of May 1945, but the violence and inhumanity of people and nations lasted for months and, in some locales, years.  It is hard to envision, but there were no governments, police, schools, universities, banks, currencies, telephones, post offices, private property, trains, cars, buses, gas, electricity, food or water.  There was utter devastation and then,  starvation, vengeance on a massive scale, ethnic cleansing, on-going anti-semitism, pogroms, massacres and civil war. A writer for the New York Times called it "the new Dark Continent".
                                        The descent into anarchy began with personal vengeance.  Those freed in their camps killed their guards, those held in slave labor murdered local Germans, and the Poles and Czechs took particularly violent actions against the Germans still in their midst. The author states that the peoples of eastern Europe did to the Germans what the Germans had done to them.  In all countries, collaborators were sought out and summarily executed.  The Resistance and the Partisans who led the revenge against the the traitors were actually exempted from any responsibility by laws passed ex post facto allowing their actions.  Frustrated by twenty years of fascism and years of German occupation, northern Italy saw 15,000-20,000 revenge killings in 1945-46.  Centuries of anti-semitism led to either indifference to the Jews who tried to go home or actual massacres in Poland and Hungary.
                                       Allied-approved ethnic cleansing led to the massive dislocation of millions, which the author analogized to the disruptions occasioned by the collapse of the Roman Empire. The decision had been made by the Big Three to move Poland west. Thus, Poland took over land from Germany and the USSR, specifically the Ukraine, took over eastern Poland.  Although most had fled prior to the arrival of the Red Army, there had been eleven million Germans in what became Poland. The Poles sent millions of German packing and the Ukrainians did the same to the Poles.  There was little oversight and non-stop violence.  Throughout Europe, nations pursued racial policies to make Poland all Polish, Czechoslovakia all Czech, Hungary all Hungarian etc. Millions of Germans were returned to the Reich; in many instances they were descendants of immigrants from earlier centuries.  There were over four million deportees in the British and Russian Sectors and three and a half million in the American.  Eastern Europe became ethnically cleansed with homogenous populations.
                                        The final source of conflict was between the communists and their opponents.  In southwest France, where the Resistance liberated a large section of the country, many were murdered, not because they were collaborators, but because they were opposed to the Reds. The Croats fled to Austria to escape the Serbs, were returned to Yugoslavia, and 70,000 were summarily executed.  The incredibly vicious Greek Civil War soon followed, leaving the country free, but devastated.  The problems in Greece led to the creation of the Truman Doctrine, followed soon thereafter by the Marshall Plan.  The Marshall Plan helped Western Europe finally get back on its feet, but confirmed the split with Stalin.
                                       Communism did not come peaceably or easily in the east.  As many as 400,000 Ukrainian partisans were still fighting the Soviets in 1950.  In the Baltic states, the ongoing resistance formed the legends that maintained the will of ethnic Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians throughout the Soviet era.
                                       History is never past and lives on in the national myths of every country in Europe today.  The occupied nations view their now almost universal resistance and courage through rose-colored glasses. The Russians are wistful for 'The Great Patriotic War', the British have made the war a national industry and in America, we honor 'The Greatest Generation'.
                                       During a Baltic trip in 2005, I saw firsthand the passion and anger still felt by many.  In Tallin, Estonia, a twenty-something tour guide spoke vehemently about what the Russians had done to the city and it's people when they fought the retreating Germans.  He didn't mention what the Germans did during their occupation and retreat. The next day at a Romanov Palace, a young Russian woman was brought to tears describing  the Germans' depredations and destruction of the famed Amber Room. Hopefully the passage of time will move theses emotions further into the past and not resurrect them.

A Man and His Ship, Ujifusa - B+

                                         For a decade after its 1952 launch, the SS United States was the grandest, most luxurious, fastest, indeed greatest ship that had ever sailed the seas.  The ship captured the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing by crushing the record held for twenty years by the Queen Mary.  No US ship had held the record in over a hundred years.  Yet, the age of the jet airliner terminated the era of first class Atlantic crossings and the United States career was over by the late 60's.   This very enjoyable book tells the story of Atlantic crossings in the 20th century and the obsession of William Francis Gibbs to build this ship.  The tale  is filled with the legendary names of the times: Titanic of course, but also, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, Andrea Doria, Leviathan, Il de France, Normandie, Morro Castle, Lusitania and many more. Gibbs first dreamed up his plans as a schoolboy and spent forty years working toward the day he could build his vision.  Interestingly, the prime financial backer was Vincent Astor, whose father died on the Titanic.  Speed was the name of the game and the United States could go 45 mph.  If you like stories about boats and the sea, as I always have, this is a great read.