Kommando

Special forces, secret agents, elite soldiers and policemen, and others who have proven themselves as skilled, dedicated, and tough beyond the average person always make for interesting stories, both in real-life history and in fiction.  I am usually interested in such material, especially if it’s from actual wars and other events, although I did read the original Jason Bourne trilogy (admittedly, while on an exercise bike).  I have usually read from a U.S.-centric position and certainly from one focused on the West, both because that’s what interests me most, but also because that is what tends to be available to me (the victors write history, right?).

Kommando: German Special Forces of World War Two by James Lucas (ISBN: 0-304-35127-X) is a book that takes a look at special forces from the other side.  Lucas is clearly pro-Ally and writes from a perspective driven purely by scholarly interest.  The writing is dispassionate and appropriately covers the material.  He discusses German special forces in the army, navy, and air force during World War II.  He notes that German efforts in this area, just like happens to be the case for many other countries, historical and modern, were hampered by bureaucratic infighting, although this is probably a good thing in the case of World War II.  The book catalogues various battles and operations that German special forces were involved in, some successful, such as the taking of a large fortress, the Belgian Fort Eben-Emael, and others resulting in large losses for the Germans, such as an attempt at capturing Yugoslav Partisan leader Josip Tito.  There were also descriptions of guerilla action and more political things, such as an operation in Poland, where the intent of the operation was to make it look like the Poles were revolting, harming Germans, and giving Germany a reason to attack.  There were descriptions of the German Navy trying to conduct special operations in specially designed boats and submarines, most of which were abject failures.  The air force didn’t fare much better, although the author places much of the blame for this on German military leadership, including Hitler, who expected too much and did not use the special forces in appropriate situations.  Finally, the book examines non-military forces, which were special only in the sense that they weren’t regular soldiers.  In general, using civilians was even more havoc-filled than the failed operations that involved professional soldiers.

I am, by no means, a military historian, so this was an interesting book, although it faded toward the end as it catalogued the various failures of the German navy and Luftwaffe to conduct special operations.  Maybe that is another reason I’ve read so much about American and other Allied successes?  Victory and success probably make for better stories.  It was interesting to learn about a new subject, but it was a little dry once it got outside the major successes.  I, like the author, found that something ultimately to be grateful for, as that meant that Germany likely had the tools at its disposal to be successful using special operations in the war, but often didn’t because of management and other problems, which was a boon to the Allies.

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Savage Continent

My high school offered a number of Advanced Placement® classes.  I availed myself of the opportunity of taking some of them, but European History was not one of them.  It seemed too far removed from anything involving me, too obscure.  Since then, thanks to things like serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Russia and my wife being from Europe, as well as a greater appreciation for my family history, which has a lot of Europe in it, I’ve developed a greater interest in Europe and European history.  The AP class typically starts with events in the XIV century, and my interests don’t usually go back that far, as the XX century and today are usually what intrigue me, likely because I see the connection, just like I didn’t see the connection back in high school.

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe (ISBN: 978-1-250-03356-7) takes a very raw look at the immediate post-World War II period in European history.  The author catalogues the side of post-war Europe that is not usually highlighted in articles and books: genocide, ethnic cleansing, corruption, and violence.  The wartime years are famous for those, but they continued, usually on a smaller scale and in a more isolated fashion, for years after the Allies defeated the Axis powers.  Lowe examines the post-war conditions and how they created the ideal setting for further violence.  While the Allied armies tried to gain control and figure out just what they had on their hands, displaced persons and refugees wandered Europe.  There were plenty of instances of vigilante justice and people looking for revenge against the Germans or other people that had truly or only purportedly wronged others.  In Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and a few other places, the German concentration camps were still being used, either has temporary housing or by the Soviets or others for their original purposes, just against a new type of inmate.  Ukrainian and Poles fought.  Greece went into a civil war.  Jews continued to find no quarter.  The Allies and international organizations worked hard to remedy the harsh conditions, but given the level of destruction the war had wrought, it was often slow going.  Finally, the emerging struggle of the Cold War meant that some of these problems were not given the focus that some would have liked them to have been under.

The book was a very interesting read, although it is easily one of those that is often described as “hard” because of the vivid descriptions of man’s cruelty to his fellowman.  The descriptions of the trials and judgements (or lack thereof) against Nazi sympathizers and collaborators in many European countries was interesting and presented interesting arguments on why they were conducted in the manner that they ultimately were.  I thought a lot of the content was new to me in that I didn’t know about this or that specific situation, but none of it surprised me, having spent time in and trying to learn about the Balkans.  It seems that a lot of the areas where post-war conflagrations happened are the same areas that are still thought of as potential flashpoints today.  People should be aware of the history and the potential consequences of various actions in these places.  I thought the book was somewhat anti-victor (both Western and Communist), laying blame for some of the post-war atrocities at the feet of the Allies.  I wasn’t convinced that was accurate or appropriate, but the book was interesting and provided a good view into a part of European history that is not often discussed.

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Dave Barry’s Money Secrets

Reading the newspaper was an institution of my childhood.  My parents always subscribed to the Deseret News, one of Utah’s two major papers.  I remember seeing my mom and my dad read the paper.  When I was really young, my interaction with the newspaper was limited to asking my parents to “read me the ‘Circle,’” which is what I called the Family Circus, since it was the only comic published in a circle instead of squares or rectangles.  Later on, I started to read the newspaper for myself.  I found it fascinating and read articles and columns from all the sections, but admit that the comics and the sports were the priorities.  Sunday’s massive paper with extra sections and tons of advertising inserts also featured Dave Barry’s nationally syndicated column, and I usually thought they were amazing.

Dave Barry’s Money Secrets: Like: Why Is There a Giant Eyeball on the Dollar? (ISBN: 1-4000-4758-7) is a parody of financial advice books or self-help books and contains a lot of Barry’s goofball humor as well as the kinds of juxtapositions of what people are always saying and what actually happens in real life that have kept comedians in business since the dawn of time.  He talks about the need for money, the lack of money, the history of money, investment opportunities, financial gurus, famous rich people (the bit on Donald Trump was surprisingly germane), tipping, and the stock market, among other things.  None of it is sound financial advice, but it the vast majority of it hits home, like all good humor, because there’s some truth to it.

With the demise of newspapers, I haven’t read Dave Barry in close to twenty years, so the book was a fun read.  I had never read a book by Barry, so this was also a new experience.  As always, I enjoyed the most of the humor.  I made the mistake of reading it on an airplane and I unsuccessfully stifled a few laughs out loud.  I think the book format was just maybe a little too much for me.  The column once a week was probably more the portion size I prefer.  I also thought there was more gutter humor in the book than I remember in the columns (unsurprising, given that I was reading the columns over twenty years ago, when standards were a little different, especially in the newspaper industry as opposed to the book industry).

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Master and Commander

Life at sea has captured people’s imaginations since the beginning of time judging by the number of novels written about seafarers.  Shipwrecks, battles, pirates, and journeys to exotic locales make for good stories, both when it’s history and when it comes in the form of a novel or a movie.  I read stories like Treasure Island and Carry On, Mr. Bowditch.  It was a world I was not really familiar with, coming from a land-locked state, but with the danger, discovery, and adventure, it was great reading.  In my teenage years, I saw the movie White Squall, which was a bit of a coming-of-age story, but the adventure of the sea and hard-knock learning made for a great story.  I also enjoyed the movie Master and Commander, which I saw in my early 20s.  I didn’t know that last movie was based on a set of rather well-known novels.

Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian (ISBN: 0-393-30705-0) is the first in what turned out to be a twenty-book series.  The novel starts off with the main protagonist, Jack Aubrey, being promoted and taking the helm of his own ship.  He finds a guy named Stephen Maturin to be the ship’s surgeon, and off the two main characters in the series go, sailing for the Royal Navy.  Their first duty is convoy escort, but having successfully completed that, they are given permission to cruise, looking for prizes (enemy ships, as the setting for the books is the Napoleonic Wars).  Aubrey leads his crew to a few successes, some minor, some much more significant.  Throughout, life aboard a ship and life in port are presented in life-like detail, right down to the ropes and pulleys aboard the ship.  While Aubrey and Maturin headline the action, the story includes the other officers and men aboard, giving a complete picture.  The story is loosely based on some actual events in the Royal Navy’s history.  When the crew is in port, one is also introduced into Captain Harte, Aubrey’s superior, and Harte’s wife, with whom Aubrey is having an affair.  That comes back to bite Aubrey toward the end of the novel, when he is prevented from getting any of his prize money, which is Harte’s way of getting back at him.

The book was an interesting novel.  I’d have to watch the movie again to compare it to the book (although the movie is based on the first three books in the series).  It was a bit technical at times, but it really fit into the story since the sailors had to explain things to Maturin, who was a landman.  The explanations helped non-sailors like myself, but I often found myself lost in discussions of ropes and sails.  The action scenes were good, though.  I liked the realistic nature of the story, too, which applied to life on land, at sea, and in all the various professions encountered.  It seemed that O’Brian knew his stuff.  Overall, I liked it enough that I’m interested in finding the second book.  I was surprised in a couple instances by language sailors are famous for since I didn’t think those words were usually printed in stuff mass marketed in the 1970s.

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Flashpoints

In the end, the problem of Europe is the same problem that haunted its greatest moment, the Enlightenment.  It is the Faustian spirit, the desire to possess everything even at cost of their souls.  Today their desire is to possess everything at no cost.  They want permanent peace and prosperity.  They want to retain their national sovereignty, but they do not want these sovereign states to fully exercise their sovereignty.  They want to be one people, but they do not want to share each other’s fate.  They want to speak their own language, but they don’t believe that these will be a bar to complete mutual understanding.  They want to triumph, but they don’t want to risk. They want to be completely secure, but they don’t wish to defend themselves.

Europe has always been a hotbed of military activity.  I never really understood that in the 1700s and 1800s because so many of the nobility were related.  Even as World War I approached, the situation was much the same, and the leaders England, Germany, Russia, and others were all related in one way or another.  I would think that would’ve kept things calmer, but it didn’t.  Obviously, World War I and World War II followed the pattern of violence.  From then on, though, Europe has been relatively stable or, at least, the famous parts that people want to visit have been.  Always lurking under the surface, especially during the Cold War, though, was the threat of war.  It makes for interesting study and reading.

In Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe by George Friedman (ISBN: 978-0-307-95113-7), the author examines the history of Europe between the great wars and then wants to know if Europe will continue in its post-World War II ways or return to its long history of war.  He argues that Europe’s history of conflict has not come to an end.  The war in Bosnia & Herzegovina after Yugoslavia disintegrated and Russia’s invasions of Georgia and Ukraine are given as the most prominent examples of how Europe has not been very peaceful since the fall of the Soviet Union, and that’s relatively recent.  He discusses many of the problems Europe is facing, such as immigration from predominantly Muslim societies, the UK’s distance from the EU (the book was written before Brexit was finalized), friction between northern Europe and southeastern Europe, and economic concerns throughout the European Union.  Friedman bases a lot of his analysis on what he calls borderlands, which are areas where cultures, nations, and ethnic groups meet and mingle.  People grow up speaking three or four languages and are involved in cross-border trade, but always seem to maintain some sort of identity, be it religious, ethnic, or national.  When conditions get worse, such as when the economy takes a hit, these borderlands can turn into flashpoints that have the potential to turn into war (or a larger war if multiple flashpoints go off at the same time).  The book is predictive in nature, so only time will tell.

While already a few years old, the book seemed relevant to today’s Europe.  Bosnia & Herzegovina is still unsettled with the ethnic Serb entity, the Serb Republic, defiantly worked towards ever-greater autonomy.  Kosovo is still a major sore point for the Serbs.  The Greeks and Turks are always on edge with each other.  The Greeks and Macedonians continue to squabble over just who was there first and whether the name of a country can infer violent intentions.  The EU itself has a member in Cyprus that is home to a frozen conflict.  Other frozen conflicts on the European periphery like Nagorno-Karabakh and Russia’s incursion into Ukraine are keeping things warm.  The author placed a lot of weight on Germany’s economic domination of the EU and how other countries resent that (which is likely true — as the story goes, a few years ago, a German missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Athens was beat up when some Greeks learned he was a German, and the Greeks were of the opinion that Germany had caused most, if not all, of their economic problems).  I continue to think Russia, immigration, and energy (all of which Friedman touched on) have the biggest potential to add a spark to the flashpoints.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.