My Amazon Review of Brendan Simms' and Charlie Laderman's "Hitler's American Gamble"

 

Five Days in December

 

Cambridge history professor Brendan Simms and King’s College lecturer Charlie Laderman have offered up a revisionist history on why Hitler declared war on the United States and why it was not self-evident that the United States would enter the war absent Hitler’s declaration. The five days between the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 and Hitler’s declaration of war on December 11, 1941, were truly momentous. Two days before the Soviets launched a massive counterattack on German forces deep inside of Russia and broke through on a broad front throughout the month. In Egypt the British were pushing the Germans out of Libya creating great tension in Vichy France.

 

Meanwhile the Japanese were running riot throughout southeast Asia by occupying Thailand, invading Malaya, and attacking the Philippines. On December 10^th land based Japanese aircraft sunk the prides of the British Navy, the battleships HMS Prince of Wales and the Repulse thereby breaking British sea power in region and paving the way for the taking of Singapore. It also marked the end of the battleship era in naval power. Henceforth aircraft and submarines would rule the waves.

 

After Pearl Harbor America declares war on Japan, but it does nothing with respect to Germany. This is despite the fact that there were ongoing military coordination talks between Britain and the United States. Popular history has it that America left isolationism after Pearl Harbor, not true according to Simms and Laderman. To them the isolationist lobby was still strong enough to cause hesitancy on the part of Roosevelt to delay declaring war on Germany. Further much to Churchill’s consternation lend lease aid to Britain and Russia was suspended to reallocate the supplies to the Pacific war. Thus, it is Germany’s declaration of war that brings America into the European conflict making the war truly global.

 

Strategically Hitler’s move was a disaster. Why did he do it? He did not have to act under Germany’s defensive treaty with Japan. Japan attacked the U.S., not the other way around. According to Simms and Laderman Hitler believe that war with the United States was inevitable, and he would rather have it on his terms than Roosevelt’s. He viewed America as the ultimate “have” power while his Germany was the ultimate “have not” power. He also believed that the United States could not fight a two-front war with the Axis and that, at least initially, lend lease aid to Britain and Russia would wane. It was American and British arms that turned the tide at the Battle of Moscow.

 

With the U.S. in the war Hitler had no need to delay his final solution in western Europe. To him the Jews of western Europe were hostages to keep America out, but with his declaration the roundup of western European Jewry was rapidly accelerated.  In the east Jews were treated as enemy and treated accordingly. The infamous Wannsee Conference to plan the destruction of European Jewry would take place in January.

 

This is a book of microhistory that delves into great detail on the high politics of a few days that changed the world along with a series of (wo)man on the street comments on the fast-moving events which gives the book great texture. Simms and Laderman have written a history at its best.   

For the complete Amazon URL see: Five Days in December (amazon.com)

My Amazon Review of Derek Penslar's "Theodor Herzl: A Charismatic Personality"

A Prophet with Honor

A really wanted to like Harvard history professor Derek Penslar’s biography of the great Zionist hero, Theodor Herzl. Simply put, the words don’t fly off the page, they just sit there and hence I had to put the book down too many times. That said Penslar presents a nuanced view of Herzl’s life. He shows his charismatic personality that captivates European Jewry and he shows his bouts of depression, his heart condition which kills him at age 44 and his less than successful roles as a husband and a father.

Herzl comes from an assimilated upper-middle class fin-de-siecle Vienna family. After receiving a law degree he becomes a correspondent and literary editor for the very influential Vienna newspaper, the Neue Freie Presse. From that post he witnesses the antisemitism of Vienna mayor Kurt Lueger. Then as Paris correspondent he sees the vitriolic antisemitism of republican France that the Dreyfus affair brought to the fore. He then realizes that there isn’t much hope for the Jews of Europe.

Herzl becomes the voice of a nascent Zionist movement with his publication of the now classic “Der Judenstaat” (The Jewish State). He calls for a Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland in 1897 and out of that grows a formal Zionist organization. He goes on the meet the German Kaiser, the Ottoman Sultan and the Pope. His charisma is so strong that this highly assimilated Jew becomes a hero to the masses of Jewish people trapped in the shtetls of Eastern Europe. Along the way he continues to write plays. How he found the time is beyond me.

Penslar goes into great detail of Herzl’s failed idea of creating a Jewish State in British Uganda. That proposal is rejected by the masses of Eastern Europe and it falls of its own weight. The Jewish Homeland had to be Palestine.

There is great stuff in the book. I only wish that Penslar told the story with the verve and charisma of Herzl.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1376C9VDNFRA9/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Andrew Nagorski's "1941: The Year Germany Lost the War"

The Hitler- Stalin Duel

Journalist and historian Andrew Nagorski’s highly readable book places 1941 as the pivotal year of World War II. Although the actual tide of the war turned in 1943, the die was cast in 1941. His book is very much in the tradition of Ian Kershaw’s broader “Fateful Choices” which focuses on both 1940 and 1941 as the two years that determined the outcome of the war. Although Nagorski discusses the roles of Churchill, Roosevelt and the Japanese he mostly focuses on Hitler and Stalin. 

To Nagorski it is Hitler’s failure to understand that Germany did not have the resources to simultaneously fight the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union that led him into the trap that Russia became. Yet it was a very close run thing during the 1940 battle of Moscow. The Soviets won that battle because Stalin finally relented in giving battlefield control to General Zhukov. Prior to that Stalin failed to heed his generals and more importantly refused to accept intelligence from multiple sources, especially Richard Sorge in Tokyo, that Hitler was about to invade Russia. It was Japan’s decision to move south in 1941, instead of supporting Hitler in Russia, that enabled Zhukov’s army to be transferred from Siberia to the Moscow front.

Hitler’s tactical mistake on the Russian front was his maltreatment of captured POWs and the civilian population. Initially the long suffering Russian people welcomed the German Army, but it was the harsh treatment by the German occupiers that soon made enemies of them. It was also in 1941 Russia that the horrible outlines of Hitler’s destruction of European Jewry was actualized.

Nagorski’s Roosevelt and Hopkins are all in to aid Britain prior to Pearl Harbor. In fact it was with the introduction of the lend-lease program that Hitler believed that war with the United States would be inevitable.

Nagorski is very good in developing his thesis that Stalin from the get go was thinking beyond the alliance with the U.S. and Britain towards a postwar era that would enable him to capture the gains he made in the Ribbentrop- Molotov Pact of 1939. Thus to Nagorski the Cold War begins in 1941 and further he sees both Roosevelt and Hopkins being taken in by the wily Stalin against the wishes of the far more experienced diplomat George Kennan.

I have only scratched the surface of Nagorski’s magnificent book. He brings real drama to the personalities and the events of that very critical time when, in very real sense, civilization was held in the balance.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1X6BGF00YCXTZ/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Idina Hoffman's "Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures

On the Front Page of the Twentieth Century

Adina Hoffman has written an important biography the great screen writer Ben Hecht. She takes his life from the Lower Eastside of the 1890s, to Racine, Wisconsin, and then on to the newspaper world of Chicago, to Broadway and then on to Hollywood. In the 1930s Hecht became the highest paid screen writer in Hollywood turning out such classics as Scarface, Viva Villa, Gunga Din, Twentieth Century, Monkey Business and Wuthering Heights. He would also rewrite without credit Gone with the Wind, The Shop around the Corner, Mutiny on the Bounty and much later Casino Royal. Quite the career.

While in Chicago he would meet Sherwood Anderson, Carl Sandberg and Theodore Dreiser all of whom would later become literary giants. It was his experience in Chicago newsrooms that inspired his Broadway hit, Front Page. Also as a reporter he covered postwar Berlin in 1919.

Hecht received perhaps the most famous telegram in all of Hollywood history. In late 1926 while in New York he received a telegram from his friend Herman Mankiewicz stating,

   “Will you accept three hundred per week to work for Paramount Pictures.

      All expenses paid. ……..”

And as they say, the rest is history.

Perhaps most interesting to me is how Hecht rediscovers his Jewishness in 1939-40 with the onset of World War II and the growing horror facing European Jewry.  He meets up with Peter Bergson who was the Irgun’s (Jewish liberation group) man in the United States and starts raising dollars to rescue the Jews of Europe. In 1943 he puts on an extravaganza in Madison Square Garden highlighting the plight of European Jewry titled “We Will Never Die.” He is assisted in the work with such show business legends as Billie Rose, Moss Hart and Ernst Lubitsch. The show would go national. Along the way he battles the then Jewish establishment figures who were reluctant to highlight the seriousness of the disaster.

Later in 1946 he works with Bergson to put on a Broadway show entitled “A Flag is Born” to call attention to the struggle to create the Jewish state. Again he uses is influence to raise money for the cause. He was so important that future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin would attend his funeral.

I would have really liked to know Ben Hecht. He was vibrant and full of energy and Adina Hoffman tells his story well.

The full Amazon Reviews appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R33KSBH77UVJ91/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv