Churchill's Secret War (Two Stars)

During WWII Great Britain, under the leadership of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, stood up to the Axis and would lead the Allies to victory as its senior statesman. In facing down Hitler and all the resources available to a European continent dominated by the Nazis Churchill had to draw on all the resources of the British Empire. In no small part this included India, whose overseas divisions were critical to the fight in North Africa.

Mukerjee does a good job of explaining how India provided foodstuffs, war material and manpower to the Allied cause. Also, she explains how the war changed the fiscal relationship between India and England, turning India into a lender and England into a debtor. However, from there the book attempts to lay all of India's ills at the feet of Churchill,  from Bengal's 1943 famine to India's postwar partition.

CSW fails to take into account the nature of total war. A key part of the thesis that Churchill was responsible for the Bengal Famine lay with the supposition that England would not divert food supplies to India in order to relieve the situation. Mukerjee fails to take into account the sheer distances involved and, of course, wartime hazards. She mentions that the U-boat threat "was defeated in 1943" but that was not necessarily obvious to the Allies. In fact, U-boats would continue to be a threat right up to the end of the war. As a result, supply levels above the actual projected needs of the war fronts in Europe (the primary theater) had to be shipped due to the possibility of the loss of material. Also, ships were still kept in convoys rather than individual sailings, further complicating the shipping situation. On top of THAT shipping had to bring the weapons of war, the munitions, even the fighting men themselves. None of this seems to matter to Mukerjee.

And don't even get me started on the I-boats operating in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, making it impractical to ship wheat from Canada or Australia in a timely manner.

Mukerjee seems to have no more understanding of military matters than commercial shipping. That the Bengal Famine was triggered by a "scorched earth" policy on the Indian frontier is not arguable. However, this action was strategically sound: Japan's war machine ran with very little in the way of dedicated supplies and would have required the rice in Bengal to launch an offensive from Burma. The fact that no successful Japanese offensive took place is a testament to this plan, especially considering how few Imperial troops were available.

And this despite the British "hiring up to 50,000 soldiers a month."

In the writing of this book the author also tries to rehabilitate Chandra Bose, the Azad Hind leader who worked for Hitler, worked for Tojo and, at the time of his death, was probably on his way to offer his services to Stalin. Mukerjee implies that the Japanese airplane accident which killed Bose was actually an assassination by British agents.

India was not treated as an active belligerent due to a political situation which, at best, made India indifferent to the war. This attitude and India's proximity to Japan's advance certainly colored the PM's attitude towards the colony. Churchill was first and foremost concerned with saving the world from Hitler. To denigrate Churchill's role in winning WWII by focusing on the Bengal Famine is like trying to take away from FDR's presidency by focusing on the Bataan Death March.

One Man Caravan (Five Stars)

A very cool book. On a lark, an American in 1932 decides to driver "around the world" on a motorcycle from London. He starts by having a bike special-built, with an extra fuel reserve, an bottom engine plate and a place to stash a pistol. Then he starts out around the world, traveling through Europe, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, etc. etc., making observations along the way and having a few close calls. He spends time in everything from a Turkish jail to a Indian Army post. Illustrated with photos he took during his trip and a few spot illustrations, the book certainly shows how different the world was back then compared to what it is now.


While not the first person to ride a bike around the world, Fulton's experiences are nonetheless well worth reading about.

Still waiting for IndieView

Licensed to Spy (Four Stars)

This is a very interesting story of a Navy officer assigned to the U.S. Military Liaison Mission in East Germany in the early 1960s. The role of the USMLM was to provide a direct line of coordination between the Soviet forces in the DDR and U.S. forces in West Germany. However, this mission rapidly changed from its WWII intent to an opportunity to collect intelligence between the Iron Curtain. Fahey shares tales of derring-do with the Stasi and close calls with the Soviet Army as he traveled throughout the DDR taking photographs and finding important material... when he wasn't being shot at.

If the book has a weakness it is the repetition in a few places regarding certain aspects of the job and the overuse of the phrase "license to spy." The book could have been edited a little more tightly. I am glad, however, to have read this book as there are so few books on the topic of the MLMs. I had a friend once who was in the USMLM in the 1980s and he managed to get beaten up by Soviet soldiers. I personally recall the Soviet Military Liaison Mission stationed in Frankfurt a.m. and the SMLM cards we were issued in 1985 and our special instructions... but that would be a different story.

Illustrated with black and white photos.

Jagdgeschwader 27 "Afrika" (Five Stars)

The Afrika Korps could not have been the success it was without air superiority, and JG 27 was the unit which provided the DAK with that umbrella. John Weal does an excellent job of narrating the combat record of this fascinating unit, which also saw service in Poland, France, the Balkans and Russia. The book includes photos, maps, and original artwork featuring unit insignia and aircraft makings. This book is a must-read for anyone who is a student of the Desert War.

The Toughest Peace Corps Job: Letters From Somalia, 1969 (Four Stars)

Jim Douglas used some of the letters he wrote and journals he kept to describe life in Somalia in 1969. Douglas was a young Peace Corps Volunteer initially sent to Africa to teach new agricultural techniques. The Peace Corps sent a group into the bush amongst Somalis who speak one of the hardest languages to learn on Earth, in an area which is materially very poor and in the middle of a culture which was borderline xenophobic.

Douglas's experiences as he progressed from optimism to frustration to apathy are interesting and the editing of his writings was well done. Somalia would have been a hard place for a foreigner to make a difference during the best of times... 1969 would turn out NOT to be the best of times. Illustrated with some photos.

Camera Boy (Two Stars)

Very disappointing, and I REALLY wanted to like this book. Written by a U.S. Army soldier who (I assume) was a graduate of the Defense Information School (DINFOS) but you wouldn't know it by the quality of the writing or the editing. EVERYBODY is a dirt bag according to the author... including himself. Remarkably, he managed to find the one guy in Iraq who was beaten by Uday and enjoyed it.

You learn very little about how Public Affairs works in the Army, its role in keeping the U.S. public informed or how soldiers can communicate without using the "f-word." Neither do you learn about NCOs can create a non-threatening environment for females to work in.

The book doesn't seem to know what it's about, which makes it kind of pointless. If you are going to write an antiwar book, write an antiwar book. If you're going to write a book about what we hoped to accomplish in Iraq, then write about reconstruction in that country. And if you're going to write about how you gawked at female body parts in Qatar, there's a market for that too. But the book just never seems to have a direction or a conclusion, which makes robs it of its impact. Lots of photos, though.