Recent reading
Jun. 9th, 2006 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chickenfeetI've read a lot of books on WW2 but Total War: Causes and Courses of the Second World War by Peter Calvocoressi, Guy Wint and John Pritchard is far and away the best general history. I've just finished reading it for the third time and I have once again gleaned any number of previously overlooked insights.
For me, volume two dealing with the East Asian and Pacific War is the most revealing. Partly that's because like most people I suspect I have a much greater knowledge of the European and middle eastern wars than of events in the far east. The revised edition is particularly strong because Guy Wint's Sino-centric insights are reinforced by John Pritchard's intimate knowledge of the Tokyo War Crimes tribunal documentation (including much material that was never produced in open court). Overall, this volume is a splendid antidote to the US centric Manichaean version of popular culture. For a start it puts the conflict with Japan firmly in the context of the long running struggle between the European Powers, the USA and Japan for bits of the carcase of Imperial China. It also deals at length with twists and turns of US diplomacy in the 1920s and 1930s and the respective roles that anti-Japanese racism in the US and the rather odd image of Chiang Kai Shek and the Kuomintang that was current in American public life, played in the evolution of US foreign policy. I was also intrigued by the extent to which British fears of Japan drove appeasement in Europe. Japanese politics and the mechanisms by which the army came to be the principal arbiter of policy are also well covered.
There's so much good stuff it's hard to pick and choose. I'll pick one to close on. Pritchard's description of the disfunctionality of American foreign policy making in the 1930s is eerily reminiscent of much more recent events; poor intelligence analysis, inter service rivalry, open hostility between the State Department and the armed forces, a hysterically xenophobic press, sheer ignorance of other countries and, above all, no effective co-ordination of policy. He was writing in 1989!
For me, volume two dealing with the East Asian and Pacific War is the most revealing. Partly that's because like most people I suspect I have a much greater knowledge of the European and middle eastern wars than of events in the far east. The revised edition is particularly strong because Guy Wint's Sino-centric insights are reinforced by John Pritchard's intimate knowledge of the Tokyo War Crimes tribunal documentation (including much material that was never produced in open court). Overall, this volume is a splendid antidote to the US centric Manichaean version of popular culture. For a start it puts the conflict with Japan firmly in the context of the long running struggle between the European Powers, the USA and Japan for bits of the carcase of Imperial China. It also deals at length with twists and turns of US diplomacy in the 1920s and 1930s and the respective roles that anti-Japanese racism in the US and the rather odd image of Chiang Kai Shek and the Kuomintang that was current in American public life, played in the evolution of US foreign policy. I was also intrigued by the extent to which British fears of Japan drove appeasement in Europe. Japanese politics and the mechanisms by which the army came to be the principal arbiter of policy are also well covered.
There's so much good stuff it's hard to pick and choose. I'll pick one to close on. Pritchard's description of the disfunctionality of American foreign policy making in the 1930s is eerily reminiscent of much more recent events; poor intelligence analysis, inter service rivalry, open hostility between the State Department and the armed forces, a hysterically xenophobic press, sheer ignorance of other countries and, above all, no effective co-ordination of policy. He was writing in 1989!
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Date: 2006-06-09 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-12 10:22 am (UTC)