The Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson

The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

It was not my intention to inaugurate my return with a book review on World War II.  However, it happened to be the first book I finished among the four I am currently juggling and I could not wait any longer to get back to writing.

There are two aspects of World War II I find particularly fascinating.  The first is how so much continues to be written about it.   Atkinson's book is the second in a dense trilogy he has composed over the last ten years.  Is there new material coming to light that was not known before?  Atkinson makes good use of many of the U.S. commanders' personal diaries.  However, I do not believe that these diaries were not available or referenced before.

Instead, the main reason is because there continues to be a large audience of readers interested in this subject.  World War II remains one of the greatest representations of U.S. supremacy and it therefore appeals to a broad readership who find great satisfaction and pride in its outcome.

I brought this argument up to a friend of mine who studies U.S. history.  What he described to me about the U.S. historical narrative proved very interesting.  Roughly speaking, the historical academics divide into two camps.  One is based on a cohesive, all-encompassing narrative that justifiably  declares all groups in society have a right to have "their" history shared.  These include includes the more marginalized in American history including women, Native Americans, and immigrants.  The historian, Howard Zinn, comes to mind as the flag bearer for this camp.

The second camp holds the belief of a history based on victory and success.  How can a country establish hegemony if it reflects too much on its occasional failures?  It is better to glorify its greatness in continual forms of declaration than wallow over a few mistakes made throughout its past.  A solidly constructed history based on achievement will withstand the tests of time.  

The second aspect of World War II I find intriguing is the role geography played throughout its course.  I am particularly drawn to Italian topography.  It is hard to not be fascinated by the battle of Cassino when you have looked up at its daunting rock face where the famous monastery sits.  The battles waged in the difficult Italian Apennines mountains, including Cassino, receive particular attention in this book.  Too many lives were lost in a terrain strikingly different than the softer images of the Italian land that generally would come to mind.

Another conclusion drawn from what is a thoroughly well-written and researched text, is the role logistics and military scale played in shifting the war in favor of the allies.  Other popular works such as Band of Brothers, often describe the more exciting and heroic individual battles fought by the infantry.  Their prominence makes it easy to forget how war may even be more about boring, efficient supply chains than anything else.  As Atkinson describes, the level of production of munitions, trucks, and airplanes by the U.S. come 1944 began to greatly surpass the German manufacturing machine.


The decision to invade Italy still remains a controversial one.  The Allied losses were significant in its campaigns to push up from Sicily to Rome.  And they did so based on a strategy whose foundation was set on the idea that any attack in Italy would shift German troops and resources away from France thus making the invasion at Normandy a less challenging feet.   A dear price to pay.

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Se Questo è un Uomo (If This is a Man) by Primo Levi

Primo Levi was an Italian Jew who fought against the fascists during the second the World War. He was captured at the age of twenty five and sent to Auschwitz for one year from 1944-1945. Educated as a chemist, he went on to write what is probably the most highly regarded account by an Italian of life in the concentration camps. He went on to become a successful journalist until his suicide in 1987, 42 years after having survived Auschwitz. After having read his simple and honest recount it becomes more understandable how such an experience cannot be forgotten in one lifetime. The memories still haunted him four decades later.

My own childhood education gave a fair amount of attention to World War II and in particular to the stories of Holocaust survivors. However, it had been fifteen years since I had read a personal account of this nature. It is important for all of us to do for the simple reason that it reminds us how fortunate we are.

It is my impression that pop culture with its happy endings, perfectly manufactured characters, and material excess often has the reverse effect than that which is intended. I often hear the justification to be how people need something light, easy, and happy that allows them to relax after a stressful day. Therefore, watching your standard formula Hollywood film or flipping through Maxim are accepted means for overcoming the difficulties of the day-to-day grind. But what often is happens is that society is instead presented with a reality that does not exist and worse yet, leaves them desiring something unattainable. You cannot have rock hard abs in just six weeks.

A book of this nature, instead, pulls at such a vast range of emotions. One cannot read it without feeling a reoccurring sadness and anger. Yet, for me, the positive aspects were greater. I understood the true strength of the human spirit - capable of overcoming the unimaginable. I was able to see how true individualism without the help of others does not exist. It was impossible to survive a lager without the partnership of at least one other person.

On a more superficial level, the winter at its coldest is something I will no longer be able to complain about when I have a warm down coat and a heated house. Winter for those in a concentration camp meant working 12 hour days in wooden shoes, a cotton shirt and a canvas jacket with temperatures at -20 degree.

Stories such as this allow us to better content ourselves with what we have instead of subliminally pointing out our physical imperfections or small bank account. Finding this self-contentment is a truly relaxing experience which is more likely to be found in a difficult book than in season four of Desperate Housewives.

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The Berlin Wall by Frederick Taylor

In April 2008 I visited Berlin for the first time in my life. The city intrigued me on numerous levels. I knew very little about the city and its history upon arrival. Nor did it improve much in the whirlwind three-day tour, between late evenings in the bars and long lunches with the Italian parent-in-laws. However, I did not have any regrets. In all honesty, I actually chose not to do too much research on the city before my arrival because I wanted to be a blank slate upon seeing the city for the first time. Then once having left I could properly select areas of interest which I felt drawn to for further study.

The case remained that I knew little about the modern history of Berlin, the Cold War and the Wall. Therefore, a general introduction was needed. For me, history is a giant bucket with an endless amount of holes in it, like swiss cheese. Water is filled in the bucket and is therefore coming out of all the holes. By studying one certain part of history over time you may cork one of those holes but this does not stop the water from coming out the other holes. I feel like I am constantly running around this bucket not even with cork, but with scotch tape, merely trying to patch up those points in history I embarrassingly know so little about. The Berlin Wall by Frederick Taylor acted as a piece of scotch tape for the fifty year period since World War II. The hole is now covered but something at the more in-depth level is still missing.

Taylor is a British professor who has studied and wrote about Germany since his undergraduate years. As an academic, I can only imagine that he was torn with what type of work to create. The unfortunate trend in modern writing is that non-fiction has really been divided into two camps. The first is the academic camp, with its over-specialization, concentration on details, endless citing, and overall low readability. The second is for the "masses" camp, which more or less, runs exactly opposite to the academic camp. I believe that a truly successful book on history is somehow able to blend the positive aspects of both of these camps. Unfortunetly, it is a near impossible task.

Taylor clearly selected writing a book for the masses. It is a book that would sit well at newspaper kiosk at Berlin Tegel airport ideal for a rather ignorant tourist leaving Berlin to purchase before his Sunday evening flight. These are more or less the conditions in which I purchased the book. Taylor assumes the task of creating "readable historic non-fiction". Berlin provides an excellent backdrop to succeed in doing so with stories of espionage, fearless escapes, and Cold War political drama.

After World War II Berlin was divided into four segments granted to the Ally victors - and France. As the divergence between Communist Russia and Capitalist America grew, the city of Berlin was forced to live out this division on an extremely concentrated level. Germany's communist leaders, many of whom fled to Moscow during the war, were able to return to Germany to enact that which had been taught to them during their time in Moscow. While East Germany represented the socialist state, Berlin - an island in the sea of East Germany, continued to exist in its divided nature due to the agreements made by the Allies post WWII.

The creation of the wall was a response of East Berliners/Germans seeking refuge in West Berlin where from they were able to fly out of Berlin altogether into West Germany. This exodus of citizens of the East did not bode well with its leaders who were dedicating a lot of time and energy in convincing its citizens that socialism was a superior form of government. The wall was erected on 13 August 1961 to prevent further migration to the West. It remained in place for 30 years.

It was my belief that there were so many exciting occurrences on the Cold War world stage to write about as well as the fascinating personal stories of people living between East and West Berlin. Taylor does a fine job of discussing both. The weakness of the book was his need to emphasize the drama of the events and readability of his writing. I feel that the events in their own right speak for themselves. Instead Taylor adds certain phrases that would be more suited for the low brow fiction section of that kiosk at the Tegel Airport. Without quoting the book specifically, I recall on numerous occasions that certain people did one thing or another "with devastating consequences". Or some political leader who "made a decision, a decision with grave repurcussions". In instances like these I felt Taylor was trying just a little too hard. I would have preferred to have read about these "decisions" on my own and decide for myself if a "choice - a choice he would come to regret" was truly such. Instead he was deciding for me and in a manner better suited for poorly written spy novel.

Overall, the book acts a decent introduction to Berlin history. It will now be up to me, or anyone else interested in this period, to seek out more specific works that dive more in-depth into the countless subjects that this book touches on but does fully address. Areas that perked my interest which I will begin investigating further are: 1) the role Moscow played during WWII, specifically in how it taught and trained future communist leaders; 2) more personal stories about those living in Berlin.

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