Book Review: Dark Valley, Piers Brendon

NB: This is one of my occasional archival posts, regarding a book I read and reviewed years ago, but haven't posted here, that I thought might be of interest.

A small departure here in that this not strictly a book about WWII, as such, but the dark decade of the 1930s, that prepared the way. I won't go into any detail regarding the contents. There are lots of decent reviews and synopses to be found online. I simply want to add my voice to the general chorus of acclaim this book has deservedly garnered.  

Like William Shirer's Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich this is sweeping, compelling history that really draws you in. The kind of thing that'll threaten to end your fiction reading. Why read fiction when real world events are so massively interesting? The 1930s are a particularly fascinating decade, with totalitarian regimes, be they fascist or communist, gaining a worldwide foothold unparalleled before or since.

As others elsewhere have observed, Brendon has an excellent writing style, and is truly masterful at weaving together complex narrative and small anecdotal details. What a period the first half of the C20th was, and - leaving aside WWI - what a period the 1930s were. With Stalin, Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, the Hawkish Japanese military, the latter already at war in China, and more besides, all sandwiched between the cataclysms of two world wars! 

I borrowed this from a friend many years ago, and liked it so much I had to get my own copy after reading his, in a repeat of what had already happened with the aforementioned Shirer book.

The material relating to Japan is, I find, particularly fascinating, as so much historical literature on this period and the two world wars is so Euro-centric. Also the militarism of Japan differed markedly from that of Russia, Germany and Italy, in that it was much more broad based, rather than focussing on a charismatic figurehead. Indeed, the Japanese emperor seems to have been carried along on a martial current that flowed through a whole class (primarily the officer class), ultimately more or less saturating the whole culture.

One specific episode amongst the many in this brilliant book that really struck me - haunted me even, for a little while after reading it - was the horror of Magnitogorsk, in Stalinist Russia. The name of the city alone sounds both awesome and terrifying! A hint of what was happening can be inferred from the fact it was declared a closed city, i.e. off limits to foreigners, in 1937. But I won't say why here. Buy this superb book and read about it yourself.

Book Review: Nanjing, 1937, Peter Harmsen

"rice even tastes better after you have killed someone" (Ch. 7, Decisive Days)

The banner quote for this review comes from a passage in the book in which a Japanese soldier, once a child who wouldn't hurt a fly, discovers in the war with China that 'It turns out that I can kill others just like that, without even giving it any thought'. The quote comes in the context of an execution of eight Chinese soldiers who have surrendered, but it perhaps also helps illuminate the mentality that lay behind the infamously brutal 'rape of Nanking'.*

Japanese forces on parade.

In 'Nanjing, 1937' Peter Harmsen follows up his excellent 'Shanghai 1937, Stalingrad on the Yangtze', with another gripping account from a conflict - an aspect of WWII which expands upon our usual Euro-centric 1939-45 view of it - that is less well known to us in the West than either the Eastern or Western European fronts, the war in the Med, or even the Pacific.

Accounts from all quarters - not just the Chinese and the Japanese military directly involved, but also the many others caught up in this massive and bloody conflict, from hapless civilians and foreign nationals on the ground, to the diplomats around the world - illuminate the unfolding story. And Harmsen proves that his previous book was no one-off, as in this one he once again expertly dovetails the many elements into an exciting and informative whole.

Chinese soldier poses with 'potato-masher 'grenade.

Not only are the many and varied participants' accounts expertly deployed in telling this fascinating story, likewise the many levels of the complex unfolding events are presented with a very deft hand. We are constantly but smoothly switching between sides, or shifting gears between levels, as Harmsen zooms in or pans out: from the geo-political overview, as the world powers struggle to find a position (and largely fail; only Germany, who re-align their allegiance from China to Japan, and Russia, who back China, really make meaningful stands), to the unfolding of the action itself, from the strategic overview to the panic and fog of war at ground level.

Throughout it all it's the gripping life and death drama at the latter level that largely drives both the events themselves, and Harmsen's wonderfully lucid and compelling narrative. Another brilliant chapter in a growing body of work. The Japanese war in China would drag on till 1945. Will we, therefore, be seeing further similar books from Harmsen, perhaps for example on the first Chinese victory, at Xuzhou (aka Taierzhuang)? I do hope so.

Peter Harmsen.

*Harmsen uses Nanjing throughout; in this instance - specific to the atrocities of the aftermath - I've chosen to stick with the name/phrase that I grew up knowing those events by.

Book Review: Shanghai, 1937, Stalingrad on The Yangtze, Peter Harmsen

N.B. This is a re-posting of a pretty old review. Only very slightly amended.

Peter Harmsen's excellent book about the battle for Shangai - the first book solely on this subject outside of China, apparently - really puts flesh and blood (and a lot of the latter) on the bones of certain events I had only very recently read about, in Rana Mitter's equally excellent but very different book, China's War With Japan. Mitter gave us a splendid overview of the whole Sino-Japanese conflict but, despite his work being just a little shy of a hefty 500 pages, in covering the entire colossal struggle he didn't give that much space over to specific detail. Harmsen's book supplies exactly that, zooming in on one relatively short campaign in what was the longest contested theatre of war during WWII, and relating it very vividly.

Chinese troops defending Shanghai.

Rather than only sending troops to Manchuria, where the Japanese were busily expanding their Manchukuo puppet state, and thereby allowing Japan to continue casting events there as an isolated incident, China's nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek decided to open a 'second front', in Shanghai. After years of prevaricating and concessions (Japan had annexed Manchuria in 1931), basically because China wasn't really ready for war, the Marco Polo bridge incident finally precipitated a decision to respond unequivocally to Japan's aggressive encroachments. But by drawing Japan into conflict in a new and more southerly theatre, rather than simply responding locally, China was able to surprise and unbalance their enemy at the same time as revealing Japanese belligerence and imperial ambitions for what they were. But the stakes were high, as this meant risking the loss of a major city in the heartland of the country, not far from the capital, Nanjing.

This much I'd learned already in Mitter's account. However, Harmsen starts his book, after a very brief prologue, with another lesser known incident, local to Shanghai, involving nefarious night time skulduggery, the end result of which is three corpses, two of which are Japanese military personnel, and the third a Chinese of uncertain identity. The riddle of the events that lead to these deaths is never satisfactorily resolved, but they may have constituted the final straw that broke the camel's back. Harmsen narrates these events, making great use of contemporary accounts, in a way that means his story begins rather like a thriller.

Not sure what this photo depicts: Chinese matrons encouraging boy soldiers, is what it appears to show.

I won't relate the blow by blow progress of the actions covered here, as Harmsen does that so well you should really buy the book and enjoy the unfolding of the story for yourself. I found it utterly gripping, by turns thrilling and chilling. Reading about these and similar events in Mitter's book was fascinating, but despite the many instances where large casualty figures are given, and mention of the hand-wringing of figures like Chiang Kai-shek over the huge human sacrifices being made*, one simply doesn't get a visceral sense of the human dimension without going into nitty-gritty detail. Harmsen's detailed evocation of the events of the first few days of the conflict in Shanghai remedies that immediately.

Depth of detail is maintained throughout, with numerous personalised interludes recounting the firsthand experiences of a large and varied number of key protagonists. These are drawn from a remarkably diverse range of sources, including the memoirs and media of both sides, from privates to generals, and also the international observers, such as the Germans attached to the Chinese forces, or the members of the International Settlement, or representatives of the native and Western press. Harmsen's research has obviously been a long time in the preparing, and he marshals these resources superbly. In fact his adroit use of these resources reminds me of Paul Britten Austin's masterful 1812 trilogy, which that author described as a "word film". The effect is very evocative, and really draws one into the events described.

A poignnant image of  the terrible results of urban warfare.

The cost in Shanghai was terrible, and this book certainly doesn't shy away from the gory details. There's something almost surreal about the status of the many members of the International Settlement's very mixed community, as they sit and watch, on the edge of one of the world's first modern urban battles. They are occasionally drawn in, as at the beginning, on 'Black Saturday', and on occasion throughout the battle, and some of this detail is as shocking as the horrors of the official war zones. Towards the end of the book one of these foreign observers, Liliane Williams, then just a six year old girl, is quoted. Having seen the ruins of Shanghai after the battle: "I suddenly understood that wars meant the killing of real people, not death toll statistics printed in newspapers and mentioned on the radio."

Chinese officers plan manoeuvres.

There are plenty of useful maps, quite a lot of splendidly evocative black and white photos (some Chinese troops wore WWII German style helmets, some English!), and even OOB's, 'order of battle', for both sides. Harmsen's book really succeeds, for me, in bringing home the visceral impact of both this campaign and the larger war. This makes it both an ideal companion to Mitter's book, the former giving one the larger picture, the latter bringing one event in that huge mosaic very vividly to life, or an excellent standalone point of entry into this fascinating conflict about which we in the west know so little at present. These books have really educated me. I now no longer see Poland 1939 as the definitive start of WWII, rather I think it was in China, in Manchuria and Shanghai, that this global conflagration really began. I look forward to reading more on the subject!

Japanese troops enter the city.

* One of Harmsen's chapter titles, 'Flesh Against Steel', alludes to the fact that the Chinese were extremely profligate with men, a resource they had in abundance, whilst rather miserly with expensive and hard to replace materiel. In the former they way outnumbered the Japanese, whilst regarding the latter, they were totally outgunned, Japan's naval artillery, tanks, and near total air-supremacy playing key parts in their technological dominance of this stage of the war.

Author Peter Harmsen, left, in his role as journalist.

Film Review: My Way (2011)

I learned of the existence of this film when I was writing a post for this blog about foreign troops in German service during WWII. In researching that post I became aware of Yang Kyoungjong, a Korean conscripted into Japanese service, who subsequently also fought for both the Russian and German forces. 

The real Yang Kyoungjong. [1]

This is one of many films that start by telling you that what you're about to see depicted is based on real events. Those words 'based on' can, of course, be very elastic! Apparently a South Korean documentary on Kyoungjong has concluded that evidence for his existence was 'inconclusive'.

Korean rioters at a rigged sports event wind up conscripted into the Japanese army

In this story actor Jang Dong-gun plays Kim Jun-shik, a rickshaw driver turned Olympic level runner, and a whole other narrative thread about sporting rivalries - with Joe Odagiri as wealthy and privileged Japanese runner Tatsuo Hasegawa - and colonialism, as they existed between Japan and Korea, is brought into play.

How far any of this extra stuff relates to reality I really have no idea at all! But it does give the film a lot of zesty narrative 'juice'.

I don't want to give too much away, so I'll skip all the sports-related pre-amble that forms the back story to the war sections. For us military buffs, the action proper starts with the Japanese battling the Russians in northern China, at Nomonhan (also mown as Khalkhin Gol). The action is full on, relentless, and of extremely high quality, in terms of the CGI looking, at times, almost hyper realistic.

The action at Nomonhan is impressive.

How realistic it all is in terms of real conflict... well, I suspect it isn't all that. But as far as on-screen action of the war-as-entertainment variety goes, it's superb, and pretty convincing, in a gung-ho over the top kind of way

Joe Odagiri, as Tatsuo Hasegawa, a right Imperial bastard.

Under fire from a Chinese sniper.

There's a whole heap more drama here, that I'll gloss over, and very involving it is to. But leaving that for your own discovery, suffice it to move to the point where Tatsuo and Jun-Shik are made prisoners by the Soviets, winding up in Kungursk POW camp [2], where life is grim and death common.

Captured by the Soviets.

Punishment, Soviet style.

One of the saddest threads of the film, and a nod to the grimmer realities of war, is the evolution of the sweetly comical Jong-dae, from a fun loving romantic to a coldly brutalised killer, whose only desire is, at least initially, to survive.

Jong-dae undergoes a tragic and brutal metamorphosis.

The only way out of Kungursk appears to be death: either at the camp, or the (Eastern) front.

Former rivals are finally united, in survival and escape

Despite freezing winter weather, wounds, and murderous Commies and Nazis everywhere, Jun-shik and Tatsuo survive, just. And that's how they finally end up in German uniforms! And so attired we find them, separated and then reunited, on the Normandy beaches. 

Capture by the Whermacht is a blissful respite from the hell of Soviet imprisonment and service. [3]

Sundered at the point of capture, the two former rivals are reunited in Normandy. [4]

The ending is nothing like the ending that resulted in the famous photograph of Kyoungjong which first alerted me to all this. But I won't spoil it. It is very moving. And I would have to say that, for all its cheesy filmic pretensions, this is an exciting, gripping and thoroughly enjoyable film. Excellent!

An Allied fighter strafes the beaches, as the Allied troops land, and all hell breaks loose.

----------
NOTES:

[1] It's interesting to note, in this alternative version of the pic I originally found used on Wikipedia (which you can see at the linked post), the description - by an American (poss even a captor?) of Kyoungjong as a 'Jap'!

[2] I think this might be a fictional camp. I can't find anything about it online, except in references to My Way itself. There is a Kungursk district, in Perm Krai...

[3] At least as depicted in this film.

[4] In, judging by the sleeve badge, an Indo-Germanic unit!