schoutbynacht

I kveld hørte jeg på podcasten Drivkraft på nrk, og etter å ha bladd i listen over mer eller mindre kjente navn stoppet jeg på Guro Sibeko. Hun kjenner jeg fra en konfirmasjonstale i Oslo Rådhus samt fra en kort utveksling på Facebook. Hun er hard i klypa.

I drivkraft leser hun opp et dikt som handler om hvordan vold utøves mot svarte kropper – eller melaninrike, som er hennes foretrukne betegnelse, og det er et dikt som slår hardt. Og hun forteller hva det kostet å lese det opp, og jeg tror henne. Å slå så hardt i ord, det koster. Du blottlegger deg og inviterer både til negative og positive reaksjoner. Her er det ingen gylden middelvei, ingen “litt” som mykner ordene. Bang bang bang. Slam slam slam.

Hun snakker om hverdagsrasismen. Hvor er du fra. Men hvor er du egentlig fra. Pen til å være svart. Slam slam slam. Mot bakken hver gang. Jeg tenker at hun er en liten smule paranoid, hard i kantene. Oftest er det ikke noe vondt i det. Jeg spør om det samme når jeg hører helgelandsdialekt, tenker jeg.

Hun forteller om den reinhekla rasismen på Skjetten, som er et bedre sted nå enn da, om hvordan lærerne lot de andre barna slippe unna med det, og hvor hadde barna det fra, det de sa til henne?

Er det rart hun er på vakt.

Kan du vokse det av deg? Nei, det er med meg for alltid. Det er ikke bare “noen år”. Det er hele livet.

Guro har det i blodet på alle vis. Hennes far var soldat i ANC. Han sloss for sitt  menneskeverd. Som Guro gjør det. Hun skrev bok om ham – den bør vi lese.

Jeg tenker i blant på hva fornedrelsen og ydmykelsene må gjøre med folk over tid. Hvor tar de ut frustrasjonen. En klok psykolog sa på radioen, som jeg visst hører mye på, at man tar den ut der det ikke er farlig. I trafikken på dustete medtrafikanter. På den vrange inngangsdøren. Eller kanskje på familien.

Guro bruker det.

Jeg tenker at for Guro er det som en pilspiss som sitter igjen under den melaninrike huden og som er hennes drivkraft.

Masters of the Air is out on Apple TV or similar, and for those of us who saw “Memphis Belle” when it came out, there may not be that much that is new. Young men and boys flying into storms of steel, death and gore and destruction – and if you’re lucky, a couple of years in STALAG LUFT. Some 40.000 lost their lives if memory serves me right.

Opposing them were the Luftwaffe. In the course of this battle the Luftwaffe was destroyed. Its strength in the West peaked sometime in mid 1943, and by March 1944 it was broken. The factories were full of brand new fighters, but there were not enough pilots to fly them – they had been killed ( it is worth remembering that the experience for the young German pilots was equally desperate, and they died in droves, 70.000 +)
By the autumn of 1944 there was no fuel for the planes (see below) and those that flew were utterly outnumbered. The source for this is “The Luftwaffe War Diaries” (1964) by Cajus Becker, which covers the entire war and devotes a fair amount of space to the air war over Germany. It’s also worth noting how much of Luftwaffe’s strength was ground down in the East (which we always ignore), and also in the South: Germany was fighting on too many fronts.

Very roughly, the British learned early in the war that the undefended bomber would get shot down. They switched to night time bombing and “area attacks” on civilian targets, most infamously Dresden in February 1945, but Hamburg, Nürnberg, München, Berlin etc were all bombed and reduced to rubble to varying degrees. Civilian death toll is disputed, but easily exceeds half a million. The impact on German morale and war effort was small. Despite flying by night, losses were heavy to Luftwaffe night fighters and flak.

The Americans started out by ignoring the British warnings, believing their B-17s and B-24s with their large number of guns would get through without incurring terrible losses. They were proved wrong throughout 1943, and only when the P-51 Mustang took to the skies over Europe in early 1944 were they able to conduct bombing with “reasonable” losses, and conducted raids with 1000 bombers (!). The US Air Force was then able to devastate the aircraft factories, as they had also been doing in 1943 (e.g. the famous and bloody raid on Schweinfurt), but this did not reduce German aircraft output… the factories just dispersed, and a record 25.000 aircraft were produced in 1944 (!).

Then in the autumn of 1944 the US finally concentrated on the oil supply, and this had an immediate and enormous effect on the ability of Germany to fight. They should have done it much sooner. Albert Speer, 1945: “… The American’s attacks, which followed a definite system of assault on industrial targets, were by far the most dangerous. It was in fact these attacks which caused the breakdown of the German armaments industry. The attacks on the chemical industry would have sufficed, without the impact of purely military events, to render Germany defenceless”.

If you’d rather just read a book, try Serenade to the Big bird ( review ) which is very poetic and pacifist – though the author was a pilot who eventually died fighting.

This pilot’s memoir was first published in 1986 by Goodall ; reissued 2023 by crecy.co.uk

“Off the coast of Scotland, a Dornier 17 Flying Pencil bomber on reconnaissance, circled round and round the convoy. Where were our fighters? Every now and then again a destroyer let off a few shots, forcing Jerry to keep his distance. Long after it had left, a deep soft purring sound brought us out on deck and there, in the crystal sunlight, I saw my first Spitfire. A strange thing happened. My palms sweated and my heart thumped; breathing hard, I followed the streamlined beauty with longing eyes. It was a form of love at first sight and one which never left me.”

This quote is typical of the style of the book, which I certainly recommend. You are out there flying, peering through sights, watching the exhaust turn brown as you apply emergency war power on the Merlin, the flak coming up, the planes crashing, etc. If you’ve read an account or two, what does this one add? A couple of things. The author knows how to carry a grudge, and he is quite scathing about the Americans and the New Zealand Air Force, despite being a Kiwi himself. Maybe he identifies more as British?

The author also consumes an amazing amount of alcohol, even at nights when there will be combat missions the day after. This drinking habit one also glimpses in Clostermann’s account and others: the pain of seeing comrades fail to return is drowned out by booze. The drinking goes on and on… there are women, too. Not surprising, but normally left out of these accounts. Here, they are left in, shall we say, at least to some extent. Another distinguishing feature is the amount of killing that takes place. It’s clear that the author loses respect for human life, and the low-level strafing in the autumn of 1944, flying the formidable Tempest, is a bloody and dangerous affair. A bumbling 109 is “dispatched” by the superior Tempest.

Killing is part of it, almost cherished. Fallen comrades are avenged. In one moving scene Spurdle visits the mother of his best friend whom he watched die in his Spit, in her apartment in Paris. He assures her that her son died a swift and painless death.

Bob has a wide set of experiences, at one point he is “flying” catapult-Hurricanes on merchant vessels to protect convoys against the FW-200, but never launches on his round trip to New York, complete with drinking spree. Then he is on the ground, guiding ground-attacks at the crossing of the Rhine. Then back in the air.

At one point, while in Holland, he commandeers a Spit, jumps in, flies to England and spends a week-end with his wife – recently married – before flying back to continue fighting.

The end is quite bitter. Denied a career in the New Zealand Air Force by careerists who have never fired their guns in anger, he resolves never to fly again. What would be the point, he thinks to himself, and embarks on the rest of his life.

“Et skib kommer ind paa havnen og stanser en stund paa sin vei fra hav til hav. Ilden slukner på dørken, maskinen stamper i staa med sine oljeglinsende stempler, og propellen slaar et krampaktig, skumhvitt slag som en døende fisk med spolen. Et siste grep om rattet og skibet svinger langsomt ind mot kaien. Mange trosser av staal og hamp tjorer det til land og gir det i jordens og menneskenes vold.”

—-

“Det glitrer av haardt solskin gjennem den kalle blæst mens “Mignon” stamper seg nedover Kanalen. Maakene stiger og falder med lyn under vingene omkring i den tynde, blekblaa luft. .. Et stykke forut svulmer en femmastret bark med veldige, sorte seil frem gennem den tidlige kveld. Det skimrer av kraakesølv over bølgene og langt inde lyser en irrgrrøn stripe av England i solnedgangen.”

Skibet gaar videre”, Nordahl Grieg, 1924.

Anbefales.

(Oxford University Press, 2017)

I have ploughed through the 580 or so pages of Cathall J Nolan’s (CJN) magnum opus (big work, or maybe oeuvre?). It does have too many pages, but it does have a message or two.

Let’s look at the messages and the (repetitive) contents of the book.

The book takes us from Hannibal’s victory at Cannae against the Romans to the final defeat of the Japanese in WWII. On the way we pass by medieval battles, the 100-years war, the Napoleonic era (the description of the march on Moscow is a great read), and then the growth of the Prussian state, its conquest of the rest of Germany, and how this in part led to WWI which in turn led into WWII after a brief interlude. Left out of the narrative is almost everything that did not happen in a narrow geographical area from France to Moscow, or around Japan. Crimea gets a look in, but that’s about it; and this war was more important than we realize. The entire imperialist era is only lightly touched on, as the source of British and French wealth and power – but not as a motivator for Prussia to become a Weltmacht. Where that motivation came from, we are not told. Nor where Japan’s imperial ambition was born.

CJN repeats himself a lot. Each main chapter, with titles like “Battle annihilated” and “Battle decisive”, starts with a brief recap. He also likes to repeat certain words, like “feldgrau” and “Kesselslacht”, The mood of the writing varies a bit, from disillusioned observations of human tendency to kill each other and quite angry characterizations of the short-sighedness and blindness of especially German military historians, to short passages taking us into the midst of battle, with humans reduced to a bloody pulp and skulls smashed under horse’s hooves. Clearly this was written over a long period, and maybe it incorporates material that was written for different contexts along the way.

I also missed more nuanced descriptions of the Nazi ideology. There are several references to race war (rassenkrieg) but none to Lebensraum or Drang nach Osten. He does include Polish losses, though (6 million of a prewar population of less than 40; of which 3 million where Jews), and sketches the internal divisions in Nazi Germany’s leadership – the mutual mistrust between nazis and the old “Prussian guard”.

Despite these misgivings, it’s a good read, hard to put down. The repetitions have a suggestive, trance-inducing quality.

What are the messages? Let’s list a few.

Wars are never won by single battles. That is the main message, literally hammered home throughout the book. Rather, wars are won by the mutual wearing down of the combatants until one of them, often both, are emptied of strength; or in the old days, before total war, when armies were small ( < 100.000) they decide that enough is enough and a peace treaty is signed. Attrition is the name of the game.

The second message is that too many have believed in the battle genius, of which Moltke and Napoleon are often cited as examples. And Nelson. These were tactical geniuses, all right, but in the end, it’s the strategic depth that matters. Everyone ganged up on Napoleon in the end because of the strategic picture, and that was the end. German and Japanese military strategists focused on the decisive battle as a way to win war – also because, since neither country had the strategic depth to win a war of attrition, that was the only way they could win – so they tried that. And failed, and failed, and failed, causing untold misery in the process. In both cases CJN portrays elites steeped in an ideology of moral and combat superiority that made them blind to the real strength of their foes.

In the case of Japan, CJN describes a highly dysfunctional relationship between the army, which wanted to fight Russia in the north, and the Navy, which wanted to fight the islands and colonies in the south (and hence the Europeans). He also describes internal disobedience in the army, with individual generals starting wars more or less on their own.The same accusation is levelled at German and French generals who attacked (and got their men slaughtered) when they should have waited.

CJN could be accused of some fairly fixed ideas. In addition to the fixation with other people’s fixation with battle, he seems to hold the French in high regard, the Italians in low regard, and the Germans and Japanese in low regard also, albeit of a different kind. Their wounded imperial ambitions drive them to war again and again, both of them infused with a martial spirit that leads to death and destruction of their own peoples and others that they cross. This sounds a lot like the old stereotypes, doesn’t it, but I find it believable in CJN’s account. And it is true that Hitler in his bunker said that the German people had failed and so did not deserve to live. It is also true that the Japanese fought till the end, in many cases this meant suicide rather than the dishonour of capture. In one quote in the book a British officer  says “if we are faced with 500 Japanese we have to kill 495 and then the rest commit suicide”. Germans and Japanese share the warrior, aggressive spirit where defensive ability and logistics are seen as unimportant. In a short war where you crush your enemy at once, there is no need for this. Below I will briefly recap this thesis in the optics of the First and Second World wars as fought by the German armies. |digression by me: The famous and much feared Zero, for instance, had zero (!) armour plating and no self-sealing tanks, which meant that a few hits would set it ablaze. This meant is was light and nimble in a dogfight. Low weight was mated to a relatively weak engine, and performance at altitude was nothing special. Much of the air war in the Pacific took place at medium altitudes, though, which is also why the P-38 Lightning could hold its own to some extent, while being outclassed at high altitude fighting in Europe.]

CJN does not have a lot to say about the UK or the rivalry between the UK and the US for world supremacy. Certainly the two powers switched roles after 1945, with the final cut coming at Suez in 1956. What opportunity on the world stage did FDR glimpse as he set the industrial juggernaut into full speed forward? CJN has nothing to say about US motivations at the strategic level, apart from the intent to destroy Japan completely – which is a strategic objective, of course. The crushing material might of the US war machine – 1000 ships at war’s end, 300.000 planes produced – makes it clear who was top dog by 1945. And still is..

CJN describes the war between Japan and China in the 30-ies going into WWII as far more extensive and bloody than I knew. Japan really was aggressive back then.

Returning to the message: if you want to go on the offensive, if you elect to go to war, you better have more strategic power than your opponent. Otherwise, you lose. Here the US is in a unique position with its enormous domestic resource base across all facets of war-making.

In the end, in both world wars, Germany was out-gunned and out-manned and it was all just a question of time, since the knock-out blow was never realistic – even Germany did succeed initially.

The outcome of the wars waged by the US since WWII also suggest that war as a political tool is losing its utility. But we could argue that threat of war still works, and maybe that threat has to backed by the odd war to show the risks of ignoring the threats.

Thanks to CJN for this major effort – which leaves me a little bit unsatisfied regarding the wider picture. But then, that was never his main topic.

About Schlieffen-plans and the world wars.

In the following I refer to the book’s depiction of the main events.

WWI
German military planners feared a long war and planned for the short war to knock out the enemy. In 1914, this was about the speed of mobilization where trains had a central role. Why trains? Because the alternative to trains was horses and boots, this was before the petrol engine (by 1918 there were lots of petrol engined trucks). Once past the railheads, progress was slow. Hence the central role of trains. CJN says that in the summer of 1914 Germany wrote a blank check to a weakened Vienna which went to war with Serbia – presumably to tighten the grip on the Balkans and keep its empire intact. Once that was done, Germany was at war, too, and then the chain reaction was set in motion. Everybody thought the war would be over by Christmas: the Germans planned to swing through Belgium and encircle the French. This failed at the first Battle of the Marne, there was the famous race to the sea, and then the trenches were established. There was war in the East, bloody enough, and here the Russians eventually sued for peace, there was revolution, etc. 

What happened in the end? After the insane bloodbaths of Verdun and Somme, the technological development and the grinding down of the Germans led to changes in the battles. The Allies learned how to break through the trenches using tanks (they controlled the air), planes and “shock troops”, and how to follow up once a hole had been punched – just as critical. CJN writes that Germany was totally exhausted by the autumn of 1918, and that’s why they had to capitulate. However, the myth of the legend of the knife in the back, the Dolchstosslegende obscured the military defeat and hence led to the next war, since the idea that Germany was never defeated, and hence would win with the right leadership, took hold.

How was WWII fought? 

CJN writes that the French feared and prepared for invasion by building the Maginot line. This would force the Germans north through Belgium and the Netherlands. The Germans went through the Ardennes further south in a bold move, covering large distances with Panzer crews on drugs (CJN omits this). A feint to the north lured the British Expeditionary Force and the French into Belgium, and the German Panzers rushed to the sea south of them in defiance of Hitler’s orders, closing the bag around the BEF. All the while, heavy fighting went on. CJN does not mention this, but French losses according to Wikipedia were in excess of 100.000. If the tactical game had played out differently, the result might have been very different. The French had guns, tanks, planes and soldiers. But they lost; I shall have to re-read Strange Defeat by Marc Bloch.

First of all – why did the Nazis attack? According to CJN, Hitler did not want the UK to enter the war, and was dismayed when the attack on Poland caused the UK to declare war. The attack on France was presumably to neutralize one enemy in order to attack in the East, maybe laced with revenge?

An invasion of the UK was never a realistic prospect due to the mighty Royal Navy, which surely would have fought to the last man and wiped out any invasion fleet. CJN also says that the Nazi leadership never had a “major plan”. They took one battle at a time. Other historians might argue that Hitler’s real objectives lay in the East – where there was Lebensraum to be had. This is covered in “Most Dangerous Enemy” by Stephen Bungay – recommended

And so we went to Toscana – again. Third time in my life.

It’s a modern world this time, with AirBnB, wifi and 4G, Instagram and Snapchat. We were connected at all times, and though Whatsapp we could synchronize our moves even if spread across two or three vehicles. A friend of mine once drove across the US, two families in two cars, and they used walkie-talkies. Once, upon leaving a gas-station, a quick count over the walkie-talkie revealed that one child was in neither car…

You get off the plane and eventually find the car rental, confusingly sign-posted as always, and since I am a literal person, almost autistic at times, I don’t trust the signs and always end up in the wrong place. My VISA-card was unacceptable to the car-rental people, but we were saved by K and M possessing the right kinds of cards. We got our cars.

First stop was at a agriturismo just outside Orvieto, the clients were Italian, and the food was simple but good. As always the raw materials are so good. Italian food is better in Italy. We were back!

Our AirBnB was an old – probably ancient – farm on a hill close to Rigomagno. Four buildings and a pool in the middle of well-kept olive groves far from the maddening crowd. Beautifully redecorated, comfortable, friendly hosts. The weather was also lovely.

We saw Siena, Pienza, bits of Firenze, Cortona, and Roma. We took at quick look at lake Trasimeno from a deserted beach.

Standing in the main piazza in Firenze under the towering tower – that felt right. The interior of the Duomo in Siena is literally mind-boggling.

The number of tourists exceeded my expectations – also in Roma, where we spent a few hours before getting on the plane home.

Pantheon is always the icing on the cake.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.

I am back. Last time was 19 years ago, and I wrote about it here. It’s in Norwegian, but you can run it through Google translate.

This time I used Google and Maps to find it, and they were not very helpful, but I found it on the second attempt. Last time it was entirely by chance that I saw the signpost as we drove past. It’s almost invisible, and the cemetery is also very small. Today it nestles between some fields, a football pitch and someone’s vegetable garden, where someone was tending their vegetables.

It looks a bit forlorn hidden away here in the midst of other people’s daily lives. Any cemetery is a shrine to lived lives, but a war cemetery is also a testament to lives cut short. Some of the men who were buried here were 19, many were in the mid 20-ies. Some were already fathers. Others were probably virgins. They number 256 in all, which is a neat number, 2 to the power of 8, or 16 by 16. 8 bits, if you like. No less than 66 were from South Africa. What compelled them to come here and die? Judging by their names, some where Boers.

I was less moved this time than last. Or was I? It was both good to be there again, and a bit anti-climactic. I had been there before, after all. It’s my secret part of Toscana.

While I was there my family went shopping at “Valdichiana Outlet Village”. It gets rather more visitors than this forgotten cemetery where someone’s relative is buried. There’s not much left of them now after all these years, but the lawn and the flower beds are immaculately kept. As you can tell from the photos, the sun was indeed going down when I was there.

In 2004 I did not bring my camera, but this time I took some photos. I had completely forgotten what it looked like, except the small house, which in my memory was at the far end of the cemetery. Here are the rest of the photos I took.

Here is the official page for the cemetery.