HORNSBY HEIGHTS VIEWS

from Steve Thomas

Books: 'The Past is myself' by Christabel Bielenberg

I came across the sequel to this book recently and it reminded me what a fascinating and enlightening book it was. Not the sort of think that many PA readers would immediately think of reading but it has much to commend it.

Christabel was an English girl who married Peter Bielenberg, a German lawyer, in 1934. They settled in Germany where her husband joined the Civil Service. She and Peter clearly did not like the Nazis and frequently were in difficult situations. He was a friend of Adam von Trott, who was involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler. As a result Peter was arrested and spent many months in the hands of the Gestapo before being released. Christabel and her children had been moved to a small village near the Black Forest. He survived the war hiding in the hills nearby.

Christabel was a shrewd observer and saw a great deal during the war. She met some remarkable people and had adventures that read more like fiction. She can distinguish between the Nazi thugs and the ordinary Germans and can still find many of the latter decent human beings. Her book shows just how people were brow beaten by propaganda or terrorised into following the party line. The distrust was such that even children, indoctrinated at school, reported their own parents.

The book does not pretend to cover all aspects of life. It gives only a few isolated snapshots of people that do not necessarily reflect the general mood of the country. Nevertheless it is a remarkable account of life in Nazi Germany. Above all it brings home the climate of fear that prevailed. If you want to understand the Germans and the Holocaust this is well worth reading.

'How wars begin' - D Kagan

This book tries to look at the reason wars start. It does so by examining in detail five historical situations and discussing the causes and how they relate to some basic ideas on the subject. I'm not sure if the author or I got a bit lost along the way. It seemed to me that he rather lost track of the idea of relating the situations to the basic concepts towards the end. Nevertheless the examination of the five situations is fascinating in their own right and worth reading.

He looks at; The Peloponnesian War of 431-404BC, the Second Punic War, World War 1, World War 2 and the Cuban missile crises. Everyone has their own ideas on these so I won't say to much about his comments. As regards the first two I do not know enough to really assess what he says critically. It was a fascinating tale of how situations escalate.

As regards the two World Wars he summarises things clearly and well. He highlights the utter blind arrogance of the Germans in first forcing Russia to ally with France and then driving Britain into the arms of the French. I tend to the pessimistic view that given the nationalist pressures prevailing in that era war was inevitable.

One very interesting point he raises concerning the interwar years is on the subject of reparations. My recollection is that the German economy was supposed to have been devastated by the effects of reparations. These left a terrible scare on the population and led to massive resentment. Kagan contends that the economic damage was vastly overstated. Over the years it was paid it amounted to only a small percentage of the GNP and probably no more than Germany would have paid out to maintain a decent army and navy if they had been allowed to. If anything the British and French suffered far more in their need to repay war loans. The reparations were used by the various governments as a convenient excuse to whip up support and their importance vastly stated to the German public. It was the inflationary moves of the German government that really devastated the economy.

The issue of the politics of Hitler and the rise to the war has been gone over many times. Kagan shows, once again, how well meaning people refused to accept the evil that lay in others. Whether the second world war was avoidable is a more difficult question. Kagan contends that if Britain and France had stood up to Hitler and stopped him right at the start he would very possibly lost power after a few years. Alternatively of course he may have gone on to build a massive army for a war in 1944 as he envisaged.

The final section on the Cuban missile crisis interested me. Its an episode from the history books for me and the general depiction has always been of a Russian backdown before brilliant American diplomacy and leadership. It was part of the myth of the Kennedy era. Kagans presentation is dramatically different.

He looks at the lead up to the crisis. Kennedy comes over as an indecisive and weak leader who is outwitted by a canny Khruschev. In a number of issues Kennedy backs down and looks ineffectual. Khruschev is confident that he can get away with putting missiles into Cuba before the Americans can react. Even if they do he expects any response will be weak. The American response is initially poorly handled and even blasé. In the end Kennedy was almost forced to take action by circumstances rather than by choice. Kagan suggests that Khruschev may actually have agreed to back down because he feared the American generals rather than Kennedys handling of the situation. The fear was that Kennedy was so weak willed that the generals might have dominated him and forced military action.

An interesting book and well worth reading.

Games Spain

Games Spain has its own wargames magazine with a game I was surprised to find. The games and an English translation of the rules are available from Paper Wars magazine in the USA. I was interested in finding a different interpretation on some events and ordered three editions. The magazine is called Alea and needless to say in Spanish. Most of the stuff appears to be reviews of US games. The physical quality of the games is reasonable, not up to Command standard but acceptable. The English translations are good although there were one or two areas where they could have done better that is, a table not translated. The games themselves were OK. Worth trying but I cannot say I would recommend them to most people.

Burma This is actually 2 games, the 1942 Japanese drive to throw the British out and the 1945 Commonwealth campaign to recapture the country. There are only 100 counters. The 1942 units are on one side and the 1945 units on the other. The 1942 game was quite fun, fast and fluid but nothing to rave about. The 1945 game did not seem to work to me. Supply seemed too easy, the Commonwealth could stretch their line to ridiculous lengths through hundreds of miles of dense jungle. The Japanese could easily screen their supply lines and are far too strong. They are also set up in a fairly good defensive perimeter. Difficult to see how the Commonwealth stood much chance.

Armada A very basic game covering individual battles or incidents of the Armada campaign. Counters represent individual ships. The rules are very basic but seem to work quite well. Did not get a chance to play it through properly but was quite impressed. It seemed to give a reasonable feel for the abilities of different ship types and naval conflict in that era. It was also fast with lots of short scenarios.

Medellin Covers the battle between the Spanish and the French in 1809. The Spanish collapsed but could easily have won this. Scale is approx 100 metres per hex and 30 minutes per turn. The game system is actually quite good and could be worth further use. Unfortunately it suffers here from inadequate development and incomplete rules. The turn sequence is conventional; move, defensive fire, offensive fire, shock combat. It is the command structure that adds some good ideas.

Each 'division' has a leader and there is an overall commander. The commander assigns an order to the divisions. These orders govern whether a 'division' is in attack, skirmish, march, defence or retreat mode. The orders do not specify locations to defend or attack merely the type of action the 'division' can take. Under each action the units are allowed to conduct specific activities and cannot carry out others. Thus under an attack order units cannot withdraw and the division must conduct 2 combats in that turn. Units with a march order cannot move closer than 5 hexes to the enemy and get a road bonus. It is difficult to change orders. Thus once a division is committed you cannot simply change its orders on an opportunistic basis. Command therefore requires careful planning 2 or 3 turns in advance to ensure that your commanders are in the right place. This seems fairly sensible, although it does mean that divisions can find themselves stuck in totally inappropriate orders. There probably should be more scope for divisional leaders to change orders that is, to go from attack to withdraw.

The worst feature of this system is that the definitions of what each order allows you to do is inadequate. It is not clear for example whether units in defend mode can retreat or what is the advantage of attack mode over skirmish mode. You might just as well be in the latter, as far as I can see, it has all the advantages of attack mode but none of the disadvantages!

Units have facings and this can have an effect on combat. Here again though the rules seem incomplete. There is an advantage for conducting fire combat into an enemy unit flank but none for firing into its rear. Units appear to be able to fire out of their flank and rear with no problem. Facing affects the direction a unit can march but not its direction of fire. Again facing seems to have no effect on shock combat so you could even do shock combat to your rear.

There were numerous other queries. Its not clear whether these problems arise in the translation or are in the originals rules. We made up our own house rules to deal with the more obvious stuff. It does seem a bit unfinished though.

Overall a good system and one that has a lot of potential but needs some development.


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© Copyright 1997 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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