SOLDIERS THREE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 498, 7 January 1949, Page 8

SOLDIERS THREE

THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 193945. A Strategical and Tactical History. By MajorGeneral J. F. C. Fuller. Eyre and Spottiswoode, London. ITALY IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR. By Marshal Petro Badoglio. Translated by Muriel Currey. Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press. SEVEN ASSIGNMENTS. By Brigadier DudJey Clarke. Jonathon Cape, London. HE war of 1939-45 was, says General Fuller, a "cad’s" war. A brawl of unrivalled inhumanity, it was fought with "Mongoloid destructiveness," without recognition (except by Russia) of its political ends. Warfare is an art, he contends; its object is not slaughter and devastation but to persuade the enemy to change his mind. The chief cad is undoubtedly Mr. Churchill. He is responsible for the obliteration of German cities and the destruction of the balance of power in Europe by strategic bombing; he is responsible (with Mr. Roosevelt) for the Allied policy of unconditional surrender; he is responsible (with Mr,

Truman) for the decision to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan. General Fuller quotes chapter and verse to prove repeatedly, and at length, how the first two of these crimes prolonged the war and lost the peace. Had the raw materials and manpower used to build, arm, and fly the thousands of bombers employed in "Churchill’s private war’-the destruction of German towns and the demoralisation of the German people-been used instead to build transport aircraft and landing craft, the campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, Germany, and Burma would (he claims) have taken a different course, and the war would have ended at least a year earlier than it did. And since, because of the Allied policy of unconditional surrender, the Germans and Italians and the Japanese had no alternative but to continue the

fight, the insane war of annihilation | dragged on to its.unsatisfactory end. General Fuller’s digest accounts of campaigns in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific are illustrated by some 60 excellent diagrams and maps, but in spite of that are not always clear, complete or accurate. He leans too heavily on the books of war correspondent tacticians for it to be. otherwise. New Zealand readers looking for the operations of their own forces will be disappointed: for instance the 2nd Division’s stand at Mingar Qiam in June, 1942, when the rest of the Allied forces in North Africa’ were in retreat. is ignored, and salt is rubbed in the wound by the only mention-"the Eighth Army (at Alamein) was reinforced by a division from Syria." He is at his best in the general sections of the book, particularly those (continued on next page) — LS

BOOK REVIEWS (Cont'd)

(continued from previous page) on the causes of the war, its strategy and tactics, the aims of the belligerents, and the meaning of air power. An outspoken critic, at times even a rude one, with a strong and independent mind and a forceful command of language, he has produced a book well worth reading and remembering. Should there be another war within the next two or three decades, General Fuller, if he survives it, can fairly claim: "I told you so." MARSHAL BADOGLIO dedicates his book to the Italians who "offered" their lives, their labour, and their sufferings in the struggle against the NaziFascist tyranny, "because I believe that the Italian people have the right to know the course of events which led to ‘their ruin." He does not wish, he says, to try to justify himself: "only the man who acts makes mistakes." As a man of action Badoglio had to serve in turn three difficult masters, First Mussolini, whom he served as Chief of the General Staff and succeeded as Head of Government after the coup d'etat of July, 1943; then King Victor Emmanuel, determined that his new Prime Minister would have less rein than the old; and last, the Allied High Command, ever ready to remind him = a

that the Mediterranean campaign had cost them 200,000 dead. As befits a man of action, Badoglio is blunt and outspoken. His portrait of Mussolini is frank and critical-it is Mussolini the megalomaniac of Allied propaganda. The King is a surprise: he belied his size and insignificant appearance, chose Badoglio’s ministers for him, refused .to abdicate. The Allied High Command and later the Allied Control Commission were equally difficult; they were suspicious of the Italians, interpreted harshly the clauses of the Armistice, and treated Italy asa defeated and partially occupied -country and not (as Badoglio thought they should) as an ally and partner. If Badoglio has a fault it is his readiness to blame "the former regime" for the ruin of his country and the Allies for its troubled rehabilitation. But, for all that, his book is an important contribution to the history of the war in the Mediterranean, BRIGADIER CLARKE’S is the story. of a roving staff officer, an Army free-lance. His seven assignments took him, in the first twelve months of the war, on a series of adventurous journeys: to Tanganyika and the Sudan, twice to Norway, to an unnamed neutral and, in June, 1940, to the coast of ak

German-occupied France in the first commando landing there. . Under the cloak of a bogus charity, committee, meeting at a private house, he was responsible for forming the Commandos, from which, after many difficulties of which he tells, grew the powerful Combined Operations organisation. The chapters on the formation and blooding of these units and on the fighting in Southern Norway are the

best of the book.

W.A.

G.