by RNS | Mar 23, 2024 | Beating Tsundoku
Enrico Cernushi, Italian Battle Fleet 1940-43 (Osprey, 2024)
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s imperialist ambition around the Mediterranean Sea in the 1930s is sometimes overlooked in the rapid build-up of Nazi Germany’s military. But on paper, Italy was a potent threat in the region. What it needed, however, was a powerful fleet to achieve Mussolini’s aims. By 1940, he thought he had one in La Squadra, the pride of Italy’s Regia Marina (RM). Noted naval historian Enrico Cernushi’s describes that fleet and its actions in an increasingly desperate struggle with the Allies.
Cernushi traces the development of Italian seapower in the Mediterranean after World War I when France was deemed Italy’s main maritime enemy. Progress was slow, and the Italians were still not ready when tensions ratcheted up with Britian during the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935-36. That led to new Littorio class battleships being laid down to form the heart of a new battle fleet. Cernushi surveys the Italian warships as they came online through the interwar period but notes the struggles the RM had with the new Italian air force for independent control of naval air capabilities. That created a deficiency in air reconnaissance, which would cause significant problems during the war. Turning to how the fleet operated, Cernushi considers command and communication, finding them more efficient than many have assumed. This was also true for Italian intelligence work breaking Allied codes while protecting their own. The RM was well supported for supplies and maintenance, adds Cernushi, though a lack of oil would all but paralyse the fleet for most of 1942 through May 1943.
With all the support set out, Cernushi examines the fleet in combat. On the eve of war, the British underestimated the Italian navy, judging them weak. Their first major test of that thesis came off Calabria on 9 July 1940, when the British were unpleasantly surprised by the RM’s gunnery and manoeuvrability. Cernushi moves on to the 1940 battles to defeat the convoys criss-crossing the Mediterranean, the attack on Taranto, and the action at Cape Spartivento. The action continues through 1941 and 1942 with Cernushi describing many engagements of differing sizes and importance. Moving into 1943, Cernushi finds the Italians struggling with fuel shortages and Allied bombing of ports; the tide had definitely turned against them. That left the Allied landings in Sicily in 1943 virtually unopposed. The end of Italy’s war was not long in coming.
In his analysis of the RM, Cernushi argues that the Italian battleships served their country with distinction while dispelling the myth of their excessive gunnery dispersion. Other aspects of maintaining a fleet in combat worked well too, continues Cernushi, but the lack of carriers affected the fleet’s balance. Overall, Cernushi contends that the RM stood up well to the RN despite the political and economic problems sinking its homeland.
The story of Italy’s naval struggle in the Mediterranean has not often been told from an Italian perspective. Cernushi’s contribution is, therefore, a welcome one; he adds a necessary corrective to post-war British efforts to diminish the Italian navy, and we can see how the Italians struggled valiantly against increasingly difficult odds. Cernushi packs a useful amount of technical and operational detail into slim volume, and his battle narratives are well executed. He is supported handsomely in that regard by Osprey’s usual excellent graphics and a variety of photographs of warships. If you have overlooked the Mediterranean theatre in your WWII naval studies, this is a more than suitable place to start.
by RNS | Mar 14, 2024 | Beating Tsundoku
Steven J. Zaloga, German Tanks in France 1940 (Osprey, 2024)
Anyone with even a passing interest in World War II knows that the Germans swept through France in May 1940, ending in the disastrous Allied ‘victory’ at Dunkirk. In this New Vanguard volume from Osprey, Steven Zaloga surveys the German panzers that spearheaded that assault.
Zaloga begins by narrating the development of panzer formations, which flourished under Hitler’s patronage. Combined arms tactics lagged behind, however, leading to panzers and infantry often fighting apart. The author turns to the technical factors of the various German panzers: Panzerkampfwagen I, II, III, IV, and two Czech tanks taken as booty from the German annexation in 1939. He adds the tank destroyer Panzerjäger and the Sturmgeschütz assault gun, both of which provided support for the panzers though in small numbers.
The campaign for France was titled Fall Gelb (Plan Yellow), and that is where Zaloga turns next. He describes the plan and organisation before narrating the world’s first great tank battle near Hannut in May 1940. This proved to be a hard fight, with Zaloga stressing the logistical importance of fuel and ammunition in the outcome, adding to the main problems of enemy action and mechanical breakdowns. But the panzers kept coming, pouring through the Ardennes, and peeling the French out of their defences aided by the luftwaffe. Then began the race to the sea despite orders for caution from the German high command. Zaloga notes that Allied counter-attacks fostered such thinking. The campaign culminated in much of the Anglo-French army escaping from Dunkirk with the panzers on the horizon but stalled. In his analysis of the campaign, Zaloga highlights the bold thrust of the panzers contrasted with the lacklustre efforts of the French. He puts this down to German combat experience, though they still had much to learn. Perhaps surprisingly, Zaloga argues that the German panzers were not that much better than the French machines, though they did have better tactical proficiency. In particular, he expresses disappointment at the PzKpfwIII, while extolling the virtues of the PzKpfwIV.
Zaloga has written an interesting survey of the German panzers, which works as a basic introduction. It is a slim volume, however, and there are many aspects of those tanks omitted, particularly the human experience of fighting in and against them – a deeper bibliography would have compensated for this. Nevertheless, that is balanced by Osprey’s excellent graphic depictions of the tanks along with a wide range of photographs. This makes Zaloga’s book useful for modellers, wargamers, and any military history reader taking their first step into the world of the panzers.
by RNS | Mar 11, 2024 | Beating Tsundoku
Harold A. Munnings, A Hard Lesson Wasted (Munnings, 2024)
On 16 September 1852, a sudden and violent illness overtook Ann Hall, a 60 year old white woman of New Providence in the Bahamas. She died the following morning. This was a moment the islands had feared; cholera had arrived to scythe through the unprepared Bahamians in what would prove to be the second largest natural disaster in their history. In this poignant book, Harold A. Munnings tells a ‘cautionary tale’ of confusion, neglect, bravery, and bungling that resonates still in a place many consider a paradise.
Munnings begins by introducing readers to the people and places that would figure so significantly in the cholera outbreak, revealing the fault lines in Bahamian society as he goes along. The unpreparedness of the Bahamas becomes clear when Munnings surveys the advance of cholera in the Caribbean, noting that by 1851 nearby Jamaica staggered under a severe outbreak. It was, therefore, only a matter of time and misfortune before it arrived on Bahamian shores. Munnings narrates how it did so with a vengeance, spreading illness, death, and terror across the islands. Public health, to the extent they had any, failed Bahamians, as did public prayers; efforts at treatment were, in Munnings’ words, ‘a form of benevolent homicide’. The government also fretted about the economic costs. Within six weeks, hundreds had fallen to the disease, so many that the government stopped publishing the numbers! Fear of famine and the breakdown of law and order soon stalked the Bahamas.
Enter Hector Gavin, an outspoken and belligerent doctor with a plan to fight back. He established a programme of house visits and allocated doctors, admittedly of varying professional standards, across different districts. They tackled the outbreak with mixed results, and the facilities some of them set up were, in Munning’s view, best avoided. But, by December 1852, the outbreak had waned. Munnings surveys the other islands in the colony, discovering much the same story with some wrinkles. He lingers on the case of Eleuthera, which required military intervention to establish control over the terrified inhabitants. Munnings also relates the tragic tale of immigrants on board the Ovando and their miserable fate.
Some normality returned to the Bahamas by January 1853, but cholera lingered. Unfortunately, government penny-pinching returned too. Moreover, Gavin was fired for complaining, prompting a scathing rebuke from him against the governor. Munnings closes with the, perhaps obvious, connection to the recent Covid outbreak and finds the cholera outbreak was over twenty times worse for fatalities. Most of the victims were black and poor, a situation not helped by a prejudiced administration that was more concerned with money than mortality – the number of annual deaths would not be exceeded until 1995! Munnings observes that very little was said about the cholera epidemic after 1853, when yellow fever outbreaks and the fear of smallpox took over, and he argues that this was deliberate: the government saved face, reinforced their racist notions on victimhood, and saved money. He adds that thousands still die from cholera worldwide and that the Bahamas must protect its water supplies to protect its citizens. Munnings adds sixteen appendices full of pertinent information relating to the outbreak.
A Hard Lesson Wasted is a timely book as the modern world reels from Covid and its aftermath, while some administrations appear to indulge in the same neglect that afflicted the cholera-stricken Bahamas. Munnings writes well, offering cogent analysis, and some barbed comments, alongside a fascinating, and sometimes infuriating, narrative. Thus, Munnings toes the line between academic and public history with considerable deftness. That makes his book an entertaining and valuable read with some important lessons as the world tiptoes into the future not knowing what potential disasters might lie in wait.
by RNS | Mar 2, 2024 | Beating Tsundoku
Norman Ridley, The Role of Intelligence in the Battle of Britain (Pen & Sword, 2021)
Most of us know the broad outlines of the Battle of Britain, and we still marvel at the skills and courage displayed in the skies over Britain during this intense aerial battle. Less well known is the role of intelligence fought in offices and bunkers on both sides of the Channel. Norman Ridley examines that unseen war and uncovers two very different stories that led to victory and defeat.
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Ridley argues that both sides were unprepared for the Battle of Britain when it came to intelligence, and that had a significant impact on how the battle was fought. He begins with the Luftwaffe, which had a number of disunited agencies and little overall interest in improving the situation before the battle started. The sycophantic nature of Nazi politics also prevented the establishment of an effective intelligence system. The Germans did have their successes, however, including breaking some RAF codes, but they did not take full advantage. Herman Göring receives his own chapter to explain why he was the ‘wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time’. Göring was a vainglorious man, and he never put the work in while ignoring negative intelligence reports and inflating the Luftwaffe’s combat prowess. Ridley argues that Göring’s decision to switch to bombing London, thus losing the campaign on the brink of victory, exemplified his fatal character and professional flaws. Perhaps surprisingly, the Germans were initially ahead in the technical race to develop radar, but this too failed to bring its rewards, and underestimating the RAF’s capabilities proved destructive to the Luftwaffe.
Turning to the RAF, Ridley argues that they had their weaknesses too, along the same lines as the Luftwaffe. But the RAF responded differently. They increased their professionalism, improved communications and interceptions of German intentions, and used intelligence more wisely. Ridley gives much credit to Air Chief Marshal Dowding for his foresight in preparing for war and his introduction of the ‘Dowding System’ for a completely integrated defence with Radar to the fore. Nevertheless, the system creaked under trial by combat. Ridley then steps back to survey the Tizard Committee, set up in the 1930s to develop Britain’s air defences, including a mission to the USA to foster technological cooperation. He then provides a potted history of Enigma, which was not the panacea many have made it out to be, not during the Battle of Britain anyway. Ridley also gives full credit to the Polish codebreakers who pioneered the Enigma breakthrough. He concludes with a few informative curiosities in his appendices on Luftwaffe planes, how the Enigma machine worked, and the work of the influential Giulio Douhet.
If you have never considered the role of intelligence in the Battle of Britain, Ridley’s book will come as a bit of an eye-opener. The Germans, despite their internal problems, came close to breaking British defences, while the British employed foresight, professionalism, and expertise to turn the tide of the battle. Ridley lays that out clearly and methodically, which makes for a fascinating and informative book that readers of World War II and intelligence, in particular, will thoroughly enjoy.
