Review: Under Pressure: Living Life and Avoiding Death on a Nuclear Submarine by Richard Humphreys

 Seeking adventure, Humphreys tried to join the French Foreign Legion, but was turned away because he was too young and couldn't get his parents' permission. When he got a little older the Navy seemed a good alternative and the submarine force, as an elite, even more attractive.  This is a skeptical and clear-eyed look at the process of becoming a submariner and what it was like to live and work in a submarine.

 After some rather harrowing training, he discovered that leaving port in a submarine during rough seas (the best time to remain hidden), leads to rather extreme sea-sickness and given the fetid air the boat soon filled with everyone's previous meal. Life on board was boring, claustrophobic, all-consuming, and nerve-wracking, all at the same time. Amusingly, one of the most frequent questions asked by visitors to the boat, was "Where are the windows? How do you know where you are going?"

 

Circadian rhythms get completely discombobulated with watches on a 4-on, 8-off cycle, no natural light (high intensity lights are on all the time), no sunrise or sunset and never knowing whether it's morning or night except by the clock. That leads to instability and being thrown together with people you may not like, for months at a time, becomes another source of tension.

 

Humphreys finishes the book with a meditation on MAD. As he says earlier on, one misstep and its WW III that no one wins. If you have any interest at all in what it's like to be an ordinary seaman on a nuclear sub, then this is the book for you.  Expect some claustrophobia. 

Review: HHhH by Laurence binnet

 I have always been fascinated and simultaneously repelled by Heydrich and his ilk.  Having read several biographies of the monster, I bought this one. 

The antithesis of a straight narrative biography, I discovered it to be quite appealing and interesting, not just in his reflections on Heydrich, but the literature, culture, and historical milieu surrounding the man. The conceit is an unnamed novelist obsessed with researching Heydrich in hopes of writing about his murder as a thriller. He decides instead to provide a running commentary on what he finds rather than invent scenes and dialogue.

"Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich",  ("Hhhm is literally translated as "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich".)  My background in German would idiomatically translate it differently: "Heydrich was Himmler's brain." The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the "Butcher of Prague." Assassinated by some British trained Czech agents, German vengeance was swift and terrible.  A town was chosen at random (seemingly, but who knows) and its inhabitants killed and the town completely leveled. 

There are trenchant comments and quotes throughout: Daladier, former defense minister of the Popular Front, invokes questions of national defense not to prevent Hitler carving up Czechoslovakia but to backtrack on the forty-hour week—one of the principal gains of the Popular Front. At this level of political stupidity, betrayal becomes almost a work of art....Hitler and Mussolini have already left. Chamberlain yawns ostentatiously, while Daladier tries and fails to hide his agitation behind a façade of embarrassed haughtiness. When the Czechs, crushed, ask if their government is expected to make some kind of declaration in response to this news, it is perhaps shame that removes his ability to speak. (If only it had choked him—him and all the others!) It is therefore left to his colleague to speak, and he does so with such casual arrogance that the Czech foreign minister says afterward, in a laconic remark that all my countrymen should ponder:

As the SD extends its web, Heydrich will discover that he has an unusual gift for bureaucracy, the most important quality for the management of a good spy network. His motto could be: Files! Files! Always more files! In every color. On every subject. Heydrich gets a taste for it very quickly. Information, manipulation, blackmail, and spying become his drugs.

One interesting tidbit I did not know was that Heydrich was a reserve officer in the Luftwaffe. He had hopes of downing an enemy plane, but once, even after becoming head of the SD, he flew his Messerschmidt 109 with a group of German fighters over the eastern front. Sighting a Yak, he assumed it would be an easy kill and swooped down only to discover that while the Yak was slower, it was extremely maneuverable and the Yak pilot led him directly over a Russian anti-aircraft battery.  He was shot down and there were many nervous Germans hoping he was either dead or would make his way back to their lines.  He knew too much. When he did return two days later, he had earned an Iron Cross, but Hitler forbade him from ever flying any combat missions again.

Heydrich was assassinated (it took him a few days to die, of sepsis, not the actual attempt) just a day before he was to leave for Germany to be reassigned France. Whether the assassination accomplished anything other than his death and the deaths of thousands of people in retribution, is for ethicists to ponder.

Review: Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World by Giles Milton

 Flies, flies, and more flies and they were all fat. The city had no cats, dogs, or birds.  They had all been eaten by the starving inhabitants. Such was the way one  British observer described the city upon entering Berlin. It was a scene straight out of Hieronymous Bosch with destruction on a massive scale, dead bodies everywhere, and anything that had survived ripped off, literally, by Soviet troops who had arrived first to cart everything east. Fanatical Nazis, following Hitler's final orders to destroy everything,  had done their work well, too.

The Soviets were a problem from the beginning, never willing to compromise, and dismantling everything they could lay their hands on to be shipped back to Russia.  There was conflict between Lucius Clay, the brilliant logistician who had never experienced combat, but who kept the troops supplied with what they needed, and Frank Hawley, general in charge of the American sector of Berlin who didn't trust the Russians.  Clay knew they had to figure out a way to get along with the Soviets.  He also realized the importance of resurrecting German industry rather than destroying it.  It was the only way to keep people fed, not to mention it was important for U.S. industry as a consumer of U.S. goods.

The Russians were, then as now, masters of misinformation and sowing mistrust among the allies, deviously spreading lies about each other and other falsities. Those who were surprised by Russian manipulation of American social media during recent elections should not have been.  They have many decades of experience. They revealed their distaste for fair play in one anecdote. All the allied leaders were invited to a boar hunt, an invitation that was accepted by all with pleasure.  They were surprised when the Russians arrived with submachine guns instead of rifles. When the boars came out of the woods, the Russians opened up with a fusillade that had all everyone else hitting the ground to avoid bullets that were flying everywhere. When the shooting stopped a mass of dead boar lay in front of them having been slaughtered by the massive firepower. That was emblematic of Russian tactics. 

That first winter was the coldest on record, and the suffering of Germans and refugees was terrible. Meanwhile, the winners were living in splendor and unimaginable comfort. They requisitioned beautiful mansions, had access to the riches of the PX, and had plenty of servants.  The Black Market made many rich, and virtually anything could be had for a few cigarettes which had become the de facto currency. The disparity between the conquerors and the people was a worry to some as they feared that unless the allies could get German industry and society back on its feet that Communism, which on its face lacked the same disparities, would become more appealing. The Allies won a stunning election victory in the first election as the allies merely posted signs reminding Germans of the vicious reprisals taken by the Russians.  But people can be fickle and tend to follow food rather than politics, so providing sustenance became a priority.

Ironies abound.  The Soviets themselves should have realized how people can come together to survive sieges; they had their own Leningrad and Stalingrad examples before them. Had Stalin not unleashed the fury of Russian troops to wreck havoc on Berliners by Russian troops, they might have been far less fearful of Soviet domination. Traffic between East and West Berlin remained open during the airlift, which was instituted in 1948 ( a magnificent logistical feat) , the catch being that Westerners crossing the checkpoints had to register with the Soviet authorities thus placing them under Soviet control. So even though they could get food on the Eastern side, few people crossed to risk Soviet control. Electricity was a huge problem.  80% of electricity generators were in the Eastern sector, so that was severely rationed in the West.  Since water had to be pumped from deep wells, it had to be rationed as well. 

One high placed U.S. official remarked of the crisis, "One wrong foot now, and it's World War III."  I could write a lot more.  Loved this book. 

Review: I Alone Can Fix It. Donald Trump's Finel Catatrophic Year by Carol Leonnig and Philip Ricker

 I'm sure everyone reading this lived through 2020.  This book lets you relive the events in a nifty chronological package that I could not put down. It was interesting to match my recollection against the book's actual account.

 

No one in the Trump administration connected in any way to COVID-19 fared  well.  Those who tried to warn the president got fired.  Those, like Pence, the "oleaginous sycophant", in George Will's memorable characterization, deferentially who did their master's bidding, got burned.

 

The authors clearly had a lot of these folks as sources; even Trump agreed to be interviewed. But that also means the reader must be careful as many of the comments, made with full hindsight, are clearly attempts to put themselves and their own actions in the best light possible.

 

Even where Trump's policies were popular and would have benefited the country, his administration's incompetence prevented their implementation.  The Supreme Court turned away several petitions because of incompetent presentation;  the proposal to reduce drug costs failed because they ignored the rules, and it was tossed in court; and we all know about the Great Wall.

 

If there is any hero, it has to be General Mark Milley who repeatedly tried to be the adult in the room during meetings and was devoted to the concept of civilian control of the military, which he interpreted as also implying that civilians could not use the military as their own police force. Trump's recurring fantasy was that, as president, all the people and agencies owed personal loyalty to him and him alone, not the Constitution nor its principles.

 

Trump, who had refused to be interviewed for the authors' first book, gladly agreed to two hours for this one. It's recounted in the epilogue and consisted primarily of diatribes against those he had initially lauded but now despised and how he really won the election by the greatest margin in the history of the world. The man doesn't know how to speak in anything but hyperbole and superlatives. Doesn't say much for his ability to judge people.

 

A great read.

Review: Shadow Strike: Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power Kindle Edition by Yaakov Katz

 

A common definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over while expecting different results each time. That is a good definition of Israeli-Arab relations.  Katz, enamored of the Israeli armed forces, writes hagiographically about the Israeli strike on the Syrian nuclear plant in 2007.  Justification for this act of war was the assumption that a nuclear power plant -- Israel has several in addition to nuclear weapons -- could only be used to create the material for nuclear weapons, the presence of which Israel assumed could only be an existential threat to their country. **

 

There is an assumption that some countries act responsibly when it comes to nuclear weapons and others are not. Israel, while never admitting publicly it has nuclear weapons, clearly does, yet cannot seem to understand why that knowledge would not encourage hostile neighbors to want the same. Another assumption is that democracies will always act more sensibly than authoritarian governments. Recent events in the United States reveal just how fragile that assumption is. It's an assumption Plato warned about a millennia ago when he foresaw the seeds of its own destruction built into democratic governments.

 

Israel has determined (at least the more recent governments) that countries in the Middle East will not (except for itself) be permitted to have nuclear weapons nor nuclear power plants that might be used to create the seeds of a nuclear weapons program. They see it as an existential threat. Then again, they see almost everything they don't like as an existential threat.

 

From his extensive interviews with the decision-makers, advisers and planners — American and Israeli — Katz, the editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, has written a gripping story of the Sept. 6, 2007 destruction of a secret, nearly completed al-Kabar nuclear reactor in Syria. knowledge of which was confirmed only in March of 2018. The Syrian strike at al-Kabar was not the first time the Israelis felt compelled to act. On June 7, 1981, the IAF destroyed a nuclear reactor in Osirak, Iraq, which was, at the time, a nation ruled by Saddam Hussein, another dictator willing to use chemical weapons.

 

A fascinating portion of the book is devoted to the discussions within the Bush administration on the proper response to the intelligence that had been shared by Israel about the construction of a reactor in Syria. It was the hawks (Cheney et al) v diplomats (Rice eta al.) each with valid concerns and suspecting different outcomes. What was the possibility of a wider war? What would be the reaction of the Russians? Would this help or hurt the Iranians? Was the intelligence legitimate. It was an example of how government should work, but often doesn't.

 

Cheney, ever the hawk and advocate of preemptive strikes, whatever the issue, was alone in thinking the U.S. should bomb the site. Everyone else in the Cabinet thought otherwise.  The Iraq war, begun on faulty intelligence, was not going well and the feeling was that each administration gets just one war; trying to conduct two would lead to disaster. A more nuanced role proposed by a few was that the facility should be destroyed, but better that Israel should do the bombing.  It would reinforce the view that Israel had rebounded from the Lebanese debacle and help issue a warning that Israel could handle its own affairs and protection and was not the minor stepchild of the U.S.

 

The author claims at the end of the book that it was less about the strike than decision-making. That's certainly true.  But what a messy process, indeed, influenced less by reality than perceptions, ideology, religion, and politics.

 

**It was just learned that Syria fired a missile that landed perilously close to an Israeli nuclear plant in April 2021.  Israeli responded with a retaliatory strike.  Agence France has reported that Israel is suspected to have between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons.

[https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20210422-israel-strikes-targets-in-syria-after-missile-lands-near-nuclear-reactor]