Book Review - Images of War: 37-41, François Cochet

As if to illustrate a point I alluded to in a previous post on the M7 Priest title, regarding variable editorial quality (both are from the same Images of War series), this book on the earlier history of Germany's Fallschirmjäger is very different in feel and quality. Where the Doyle title came over very professionally, this reads like the work of an amateur/enthusiast. That in itself isn't necessarily an issue. But it becomes one when the writing is also plagued by other problems.

I'm a big 'fan', you might say, of the German military in WWII, but not - given the toxic political context of Hitler's Germany, in which it was rooted - an uncritical one. It seems to me that Cochet has been seduced by the German perspective to such an extent that his writing all too frequently reads as it's been lifted directly from the wartime commentary and picture captioning you encounter in such German propaganda publications as Signal or Der Adler.

A fairly hilarious training photograph. 

Plus points in the books favour are things such as the written and visual history of the beginnings of the German airborne infantry arm, the training the troops went through, and the fairly full coverage of the operations they took part in during the period covered herein. The bulk of the text, however, and even a good number of the images are not of the highest quality. But they are of course very useful if you have a particular interest in the subject. 

By way of an example of the poorer quality occasionally evident, there's a fairly comical instance where a picture describes the 'recovery of a container filled with heavy weapons'. Even a cursory glance at the image - which, alas, I can't find online (giving more than usual credence to the tag line 'rare photographs from wartime archives') - reveals that the contents of the container are very obviously food: one fallschirmjäger is even handing another a sausage! Heavy weapons indeed!!

A fallschirmjäger stands sentry on the Dordrecht bridge, Holland, 1940.

Despite my penchant for all things German in WWII, and their often very funky gear, I'm not massively drawn to the Fallschirmjäger branch of service. I don't quite understand why that is. But this book hasn't had the same effect on me as Doyle's Priest book did, which excited an interest in something I hadn't given much thought to before.

Having said all this, and despite being quite critical of the book, I would nevertheless like to see the second instalment, covering '42-'45. After the very costly deployment of airborne forces on Crete, which is covered here, Germany never repeated such operations on the large scale (the loss of aircraft alone in the Cretan operation having serious knock-on effects on German air strength, and directly affecting Barbarossa), the Fallschirmjäger effectively becoming, for the most part, a quasi-elite part of ordinary ground forces, save for the occasional special op, such as Skorzeny's famous rescue of Mussolini.

Casualties of the invasion of Crete.

In conclusion, not the best title in this series, but useful for those with a special interest in the subject.

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Notes:

Whilst researching photos etc for this post, I found this page, here you can peruse the whole of an issue of Der Adler (August, 1940), from which I reproduce the following:

The airborne attack on Holland is front page news.

And in amongst the adverts, a possible source for the sentry image?

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.