Two Books With Bird's-Eye View on World War II

choi

The second world war | Counting the Cost; Two British historians analyse the 20th century’s worst conflict. Economist, June 9, 2012  
http://www.economist.com/node/21556542

Quote:

"The statistics of the war are almost mind-numbing. Estimates differ, but up to 70m people died as a direct consequence of the fighting between 1939 and 1945, about two-thirds of them non-combatants, making it in absolute terms the deadliest conflict ever. Nearly one in ten Germans died and 30% of their army. About 15m Chinese perished and 27m Soviets. Squeezed between two totalitarian neighbours, Poland lost 16% of its population, about half of them Jews who were part of Hitler's final solution.

"Mr Beevor is full of insight about the connections between things—he sets out “to understand how the whole complex jigsaw fits together”. Thus the relatively little-known Battle of Khalkhin-Gol, in which Japan's plans to grab Soviet territory from its base in Manchuria were undone in the summer of 1939 by the Red Army's greatest and most ruthless general, Georgi Zhukov, had profound consequences. The Japanese 'strike south' party prevailed over the 'strike northers,' ensuring that Stalin would not have to fight a war on two fronts when the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941.


Note:
(a) This is a review on two books:
Max Hastings, All Hell Let Loose; The world at war 1939-1945. HarperPress, 2011; and
Antony Beevor, The Second World War. Little, Brown, 2012.

* The English (and Scotish) surname Hastings is after Hastings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings
([the name is] derived from the Old English tribal name Hæstingas, meaning "Hæsta's people", "the family/followers of Hæsta")

In Battle of Hastings, fought on Oct 14, 1066 Normans defeated English army, whose king Harold Godwinson (1022-1066; reign Jan 6, 1066-Oct 14, 1066), the last Anglo-Saxon King of England, was killed.

(b) The review described Mr Hastings' work: "Cynicism and idealism, suffering and euphoria, courage and terror, brutalisation and sentimentality—all find expression through their own testimony."

sentimentality (n):
"the quality or state of being sentimental especially to excess or in affectation"
www.m-w.com

(c) The book review mentioned "the killing fields of Kursk."
* Kursk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk
("The Soviet government prized Kursk for rich deposits of iron ore and developed it into one of the major railroad hubs in the Russian Southwest. During World War II, Kursk was occupied by Germans between November 4, 1941 and February 8, 1943. Again in World War II, the village of Prokhorovka near Kursk was the center of the Battle of Kursk, a major engagement between Soviet and German forces which is widely believed by historians to have been the largest tank battle in history and was the last major German offensive mounted against the Soviet Union")
* Battle of Kursk
(A) The Wiki page is too lenthy. Look Only at the map to understand what "Kursk salient (also known as the Kursk bulge)" means. You see, Germans had retreated after the defeat in Ba5tle of Stalingrad (23 Aug 23, 1942-Feb 2, 1943). Here, shortly before the Battle of Kursk, Germans had retaken the orange area, creating a bulge. The German offensive (at the beginning phase of Battle of Kursk) took the green area only, well short of the plan to pinch off the bulge at the base, so as to encircle whatever army inside the bulge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk
(German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein "believed that the German Army should go on the strategic defensive" but this idea was rejected by Hitler; The table shows "German offensive: July 5-16, 1943[,] Soviet offensive: July 12–Aug 23, 1943; "The OKH [acronym for German High Command] plan for the attack on the Kursk salient, 'Operation Citadel,' violated one crucial principle of war: the element of surprise. As the Germans moved in more men and equipment, it became increasingly obvious what was happening")
(B) http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/325371/Battle-of-Kursk
("The Battle of Kursk was the largest tank battle in history, involving some 6,000 tanks, 2,000,000 troops, and 4,000 aircraft")

(d) The review next sid of Russian soldiers, "If they wavered, they knew they would be shot by NKVD enforcers. More than 300,000 were killed pour encourager les autres."

* NKVD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD
* pour encourager les autres (French):
"in order to encourage the others —said ironically of an action (as an execution) carried out in order to compel others to obey or submit"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pour encourager les autres

(e) For Wermacht, see Wehrmacht
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wermacht
(f) For Bill Slim, see William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Slim,_1st_Viscount_Slim
(1891-1970; During World War II he led the 14th Army, the so-called "forgotten army" in the Burma campaign)

(g) Battles of Khalkhin Gol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol
(May 11-Sept 16, 1939; The conflict was named after the river Khalkhyn Gol, which passes through the battlefield; The battles resulted in total defeat for the Japanese Sixth Army)

(h) The review stated, "Mr Beevor decries the rebarbative 'Bomber' Harris's attempt to win the war by" carpet-bombing Germany.

* rebarbative (adj): "REPELLENT, IRRITATING"
* Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Arthur_Harris,_1st_Baronet
("Bomber" Harris)
* baronet (n): "the holder of a rank of honor below a baron and above a knight"

(i) The review remarked, "He [Beevor] is notably more generous about Britain's contribution to defeating Hitler, which Mr Hastings at times appears to think was mainly confined to the code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park and, after defeating the Luftwaffe in the 1940, providing an 'unsinkable aircraft carrier' for the build-up of American military power."

* Bletchley Park
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park
(located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire)
* Battle of Britain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain
(July 10-Oct 31, 1940)

(j) The review finally commented, "Hundreds of thousands

* press-gang (n; vt):
"a detachment of men under command of an officer empowered to force men into military or naval service"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/press gang
* impressment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment
(Impressment, colloquially, "the Press", refers to the act of taking men into a navy by force and without notice)

choi

Bryn Rowlands, Ltter to editor: This Is the Key to Understanding the Russian Riddle. Financial Times, Sept 13, 2012.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5badee ... 3-00144feabdc0.html

The first three paragraphs:

"Sir, George Hallam described the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as a brilliant strategic coup [for Soviets] (Letters, September 5/6). Indeed it was, and for more reasons than he elucidated.

"In the summer of 1939 the Soviet Union was threatened by a large Turkish army on its southern frontier and was fighting a bitter war with Japan in defence of its ally Mongolia.

"This was no border skirmish; the war continued from May until a Soviet/Mongolian victory at Khalkhin-Gol in September. The Japanese lost 25,000 men and more than 660 aircraft. At the time the US was Japan's main supplier of many strategic materials

Note: The author wrote, "Today, as in the 1930s, the west wants Russia to pull its chestnuts from the fire."

The Monkey and the Cat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey_and_the_Cat
(a fable adapted by Jean de La Fontaine that appeared in the second collection of his Fables Choisies in 1679; the source of the English idiom 'a cat's paw', defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as 'one used by another as a tool'; 'The monkey looks sprightly/ but the cat doesn't take lightly/ having its paw acquired/ to pull chestnuts from the fire')