Monday, December 20, 2010

Comparing naval aircraft of World War II





Aircraft being phased out since 1939








Aircraft still soldiering on in December 1941







The right aircraft for the right time – and their weaknesses










Planes in the pipeline





Later in the war









Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Uses and Abuses of Wikipedia


A History Teachers Association of Victoria training seminar I attended recently was a very enjoyable session with much debate about pedagogy, sources, referencing, and resources. We also spent a fair amount of time on issues of copyright, plagiarism, and social networking. The biggest debate that surfaced, not for the first time at an HTAV event, concerned the use of Wikipedia as a source for students.

Apparently some history teachers have been telling their students for years not to use Wikipedia, because they feel that it is too open to unprofessional comment. One person shared the tale of a colleague who warns students against Wikipedia, and then purposely goes onto the site to sabotage the information so that she can catch them out! (Presumably creating a new pseudonym each time: the editors do eventually catch up with saboteurs and ban them. Frankly I prefer good, honest, old fashioned Nazi-style book burning to such cynical vandalism, but I digress…)

Some of us were able to assure those present that the sheer quantity of review on the website means that, in the long term, the articles are often better than most of those available through a published Encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s own article on the Reliability of Wikipedia (accessed on 18/7/10) includes the following:
An early study conducted by IBM researchers conducted [sic] in 2003—two years following Wikipedia's establishment—found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly—so quickly that most users will never see its effects" and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities".
An investigation reported in the journal Nature in 2005 suggested that for scientific articles Wikipedia came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors". These claims have been disputed by Encyclopædia Britannica.

I am particularly impressed that Wikipedia notes anything that is disputed or inadequately referenced. Wikipedia is more demanding of footnotes and references than most academic publishers, and certainly far more comprehensive than I have seen in most classroom textbooks. A brand new Wikipedia article may be the work of whichever crank has put it up, but bad articles do not survive long. It can take time for public opinion to settle a new article down to a more reasonable document, but it usually happens. This is one of the reasons that the editors of Wikipedia have banned many organizations, particularly religious cults, from commenting about themselves on site.

It is valuable therefore for students to realize that change happens, and even more valuable to track how it evolves. There is a History tab at the top of each Wikipedia page, which links to the number of changes to the article over time. This can be revealing on, say, Scientology, and downright terrifying on more immediately emotive issues… Try any article on ‘terrorism in X country’, and check what changes were made just after the most recent attack! A serious discussion with your students about sources can usefully include looking at one of these ‘History’ tabs.

Wikipedia can be an excellent tool for students, as long as they recognize its weaknesses. To demonstrate this, I suggest a nice little exercise to give students before they are permitted to use the resource on a regular basis. Ask them to find a controversial article, then click on the Discussion tab at the top of the page. There, they can examine the arguments behind changes that have been made. Any topic likely to provoke controversy is a useful start. If you can find one that relates directly to your students areas of studies, consider that a bonus.

Pointing out that there can be a debate about any particular topic is only the tip of the iceberg. To go a bit deeper, start looking at issues of ‘cultural’ censorship, such as politically correct modifications to terminology, or the assumption of automatic acceptability of things that are clearly still debatable. For example Wikipedia’s Global Warming Controversy article included under ‘Discussion’ (accessed on 6/3/10):
I noticed that the Related Controversies section dealing with the skeptics anti-science positions on the regulating of ozone depleteing [sic] chemicals and the risks of passive smoking were removed on March 29... Why was this allowed? It is quite clear that the skeptics simply did not want it known that they have resisted the scientific consensus on other notable issues as well. It was quite relevant because it lets people know just where these liars-4-hire are ideologically coming from, as spokespeople and spinmeisters for industry not for people.
(As most of the ‘climate skeptics’ I know of are mathematicians, geologists, and magnetic scientists, I don’t see how they can all be guilty of being funded by the tobacco lobby… Look at the debate on Wikipedia about how Wikipedia seems to be editing away references to ‘Climategate’ revelations!)

Political biases are equally evident. It may be worthwhile to point out to students that in many articles the cultural biases of the authors and editors require the words ‘conservative’ or ‘right wing’ in front of any opinion from right of centre (e.g. Keith Windschuttle), but reverse qualifiers are rare about opinion from left of centre! See Stolen Generations for instance. The consistency of such usage implies that ‘right thinking people’ instinctively understand the application of ‘conservative’ to imply ‘opinion that might be easily discounted’. A similarly opprobrious epithet was American practice in the McCarthyism era (then, one might have referred to the ‘communist’ Stuart Macintyre), and your more advanced students might like to consider such ironic parallels.

The very best cultural censorship examples are those that reveal the worst inherent weaknesses in the Wikipedia system: the ones that reveal the biases of the majority of its reviewers… Americans! My current favourite example for this is the article on the War of 1812.

The War of 1812 saw the United States opportunistically join the Napoleonic Wars against Britain in the hope of: A) getting ‘free trade’ with Napoleon’s blockaded Empire; B) invading Canada while Britain was busy; and C) undermining British support for the various Indian nations resisting American expansionism. Their main excuse for war was the ‘civil rights’ of ‘recent immigrants’: usually foreign nationals who had deserted their military service. In fact, the British were as likely to grab navy ‘deserters’ back from US flagged ships in 1812, as the US were to seize army deserters in Paris during World War Two. (Excuses are rarely the real war aims… see Weapons of Mass Destruction (accessed 18/7/10) as an excuse for taking down Saddam Hussein: “As Paul Wolfowitz explained: "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.”)

Britain had no real war aims against the United Sates in 1812 beyond how to get out of it without losing anything essential, such as the vital blockade of Napoleon’s Empire. This they easily achieved. At the end of the war the British had fought a number of half-hearted and inconclusive military engagements in North America; achieved some minor ‘victories’ (such as landing, burning Washington the ground, and leaving); and some ‘defeats’ (Americans celebrate one British raid was that was defeated, but which happened after the peace treaty was signed); and then were generally simply happy that the whole thing was over (allowing them to concentrate on Napoleon again). Total economic effect on Britain, small. Total political effect on Britain, vanishingly small. Most British people, then and now, hardly noticed the North American skirmishes against the background of the worldwide campaigns of the Napoleonic wars.

Canada had a war aim, to avoid conquest by the Americans. This they clearly achieved, and most Canadians have always believed that their side ‘won’, because America failed in a war aim that was clearly supported by the US President and many US Congressmen at the time. The political effect of the war in Canada was to effectively unite new British colonists, traditional French Catholics (who feared rampant US Protestantism), and displaced ‘Loyalist’ American refugees hounded out of the US after the previous war. Canadians can claim that ‘winning’ this war helped create their nation.

The US had many war objectives, but it is hard to find one that succeeded since British impressment of sailors had ended before the war started. The United States attempted to break Britain’s trade blockade of Napoleon’s Empire, and failed. It attempted mass attacks on British commerce, and failed. (Initial surprise attacks by American heavyweight ‘frigates’ were quickly been beaten back, and the surviving frigates were laid up in port. It is estimated that the US captured about 800 British ships, losing about 1,900 in the process.) It attempted to invade Canada several times, and failed. It finished the war with its trade destroyed, many of its ports and cities smoking ruins, its internal economy in collapse, and completely unable to pretend that it had achieved anything like its war aims. (It is claimed in Wikipedia that the great American ‘victory’ was Britain’s subsequent disinterest in the rights of the Indian nations to resist American conquest. This is the only ‘war aim’ that the British ‘lost’ – or at least pursued no harder than previously – as a result of the war. The British did not however, return the thousands of slaves they freed, many of whom fought for Britain and received land grants in Trinidad or Nova Scotia… Britain did later pay some compensation to some slave owners, if that helps?) So it is quite amusing that Wikipedia has consistently defined this conflict as “a draw”. Some American reviewers like to claim ‘both sides won the peace’, but Germany got to say that about World War Two without claiming that conflict was a ‘draw’.

Drawing students’ attention to Wikipedia’s very specific biases - in this case a very American patriotism - is only the first lesson they can draw from the discussion of this issue. See for instance the highly amusing subheading within the War of 1812 Discussion segment (Archive 13): “Impossibility of consensus because Wikipedia is not entirely American”. The, I hope unconscious, irony of this statement is best reflected by the commentator (jmdeur) who offers the apparently tongue in cheek statement… “The header for this section says it all - obviously Americans are the only people who have misconceptions about this conflict.” In fact this is an excellent lesson to learn in regard to all sources, as most published history books reflect their own biases.

(It is only fair to comment that American nationalistic jingoism in the War of 1812 article has been much improved since this archived debate. The recent version of the article (18/7/10) is considerably better than it was. Wikipedia still won’t concede that America lost, but it does note that Canadians have a right to believe that they might have won something... a bit… perhaps…)

In some ways Wikipedia is superior to most textbook sources in that the debate is, reasonably, transparent. I used to give my Cold War students out-takes from books by the pro-Communist ‘Progress Press’ for a nice contrast viewpoint to mainstream Western texts, now I could refer them to Wikipedia’s discussion of the viewpoints. Where the ‘Stolen Generation’ debate previously involved providing students with out-takes from Robert Manne or Stuart Macintyre and ‘the right wing’ Keith Windschuttle, now you may well be better off referring students to summaries of the debates in Wikipedia… provided they note the pejoratives and at least glance through the Discussion. Wikipedia’s History Wars articles (particularly the Black Armband Debate or Stolen Generations subheadings – accessed 18/7/10) have a better analysis of the different viewpoints than most of the (appallingly partisan) textbooks I have seen.

After students have digested the weaknesses of the Wikipedia system, they will be in a good position to make careful use of its strengths; that you can look at both the History and the Discussion of any topic is the greatest strength. It’s helpful for students to recognise that an article with no history or discussion is as much of a warning sign as one with too much! The real advantage of Wikipedia is that it can be its own best analytical tool. That the investigation will introduce students to the concepts of historiography via their preferred medium is just a lovely bonus.

References: Every reference in this article in italics is the title of a Wikipedia page. Every quote notes (in brackets) the date it was accessed, as suggested by the - quite respectable really - APA Style guide. Every Wikipedia page has its own references attached. How you want to handle that in essays is up to you!

Nigel Davies
(Medieval Education)

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Rating General Lord Gort

Lord Gort has gone down in history as the man who was defeated when France fell in 1940. At least that is one perspective. The alternative is that he was the man with the courage to face the fact that France was going under and there was nothing that could be done, and to decide that it was vital to save Britain's army so the war against Hitler could go on. That is another view. In fact both viewpoints are correct, and both are unfair.

Lord Gort did very well in the First World War, and came out with multiple decorations and a great deal of respect in the army. Despite his relative youth he progressed steadily through the interwar period, and was well thought off. Then there was no reason why he would not have become one of the great Allied commanders of the Second World War, except that he suffered the disaster to his career of being promoted too far and too fast.

When the appointment of a chief of Imperial General staff was being made a few months before the start of the war, the leading candidates in were generals Wavell (who went on to great things as commander-in-chief of the Middle East) and Dill (who went on to be chief Imperial General staff, and to serve on the combined Chiefs of staff in Washington). Both were clearly more suitable to the role than Gort, who was far too young and inexperienced and to take up such a position. But the politicians at a time wanted a bright shiny face to impress the public, and weren't too concerned if there weren't too many brains behind it. In fact it may have suited their purposes not to have anybody who would argue with them in the role. So Gort was promoted over the heads of many seniors, and forced into a position for which he was unsuitable and uncomfortable.

His solution was to do what he's predecessors had done in the First World War and decamp with the British Expeditionary Force as soon as war started, leaving the position of Chief Imperial General staff to somebody else... anybody else. As a result the commander of the army, soon to become army group, of British national forces in alliance with the French, was described by his subordinates in the corps and army commands as " the ideal man to command a division". His juniors were appalled that his attitude to the French was that of the helpful subordinate, rather than that of a genuine ally looking after his nation's interests. More than one of them implied that his attitude was that of an overgrown puppy, rather than of a proper British bulldog.

It is interesting that General Alan Brooke (a later chief of Imperial General staff) was soon to comment in his diaries about the enormous damage had been done to many men's careers by overly fast promotion. In particular he refers to Gort, who, had he started the war in his proper role as a divisional commander, and being been slowly introduced to the experience of being a Corps Commander, may well have made a good army commander several years later: had his chances not being destroyed by being put in the wrong place at the wrong time. Brooke was even more scathing in the case of General Neil Ritchie, who Aukinleck had thrown from a position of chief of staff into an impossible Army command over people far his senior in North Africa in 1942. When the inevitable happened, and Ritchie had to be withdrawn, Brooke was furious and that his chances had been so damaged, and announced his plans to rehabilitate him as a divisional commander and groom him for his proper role with a corps later on. (Ritchie commanded an army corps from the D-Day in until victory in Germany, and did so so successfully in that they army command thereafter would have been quite sensible.)

Gort's failures in relationship to the French and to his strategic role as their ally, were more than counterbalanced by the bravery of his decision to take the necessary steps to save his national command when it became obvious that there was no alternative. He did this despite the fact that it was in direct opposition to the perspective of his Prime Minister Churchill, who did not have a clear understanding of the facts. Gort may not have been the best general, but he was more than capable of interpreting what he was facing, and more than dedicated enough to do what was necessary despite what he perceived to be the likely costs and his allies and to him personally. He had what the Americans would call true grit.

Unfortunately, despite the knowledge by Brooke and others that what had happened was not his fault, it really was not possible to rehabilitate him as an army commander. He could not be sent back to experience a division, as the political situation of the World War made in such a confession absolutely impossible. But this did not stop even those who had considered him a complete failure as an Allied Commander from recognizing the strength of his personality, and the value of his leadership. So instead, he was made Governor of some of Britain's most vulnerable possessions, at exactly the time when they needed strong and resolute leadership.

First he went to to Gibraltar, at the time that it was most under threat from potential cooperation between the Spanish and the Germans to attack it. His resolute personality could not have been bettered as he involved himself intensively in the preparation of what was decidedly a military command. The troops and naval personnel under his control, and the role that they had to fill, was almost exactly the sort of requirement that was appropriate for the "ideal man to command a division".

His next assignment was even more important. Malta suffered the second great siege in her history during the middle years of the Second World War, and no better men could have been found to provide a calm and inspiring leadership and for her survival. The much larger range of military units under his command, together with the increased administrative duties on the island, were a significant increase on the requirements of his previous command. Had Brooke sought out equivalency to the command of an army corps, he could not have found a more challenging alternative than Malta in 1942. In fact Gort was going through exactly the sort of grooming that might well have suited him to command an army for the invasion of France in 1944... except that it was all too late. Effectively his active military career had been undermined.

His final assignment of the war was to be Governor of Palestine. Again, this was a significantly more difficult task, as Palestine was facing insurrection and competition between Jewish and and Palestinian groups. Again, it would take a very impressive personality to be able to impose his authority on the disparate players, and to impress on to the point where cooperation might be achievable. Again, he was probably the right man to the job. Again, it simply goes to show that his failings years earlier were the faults of those who had pushed him too far too fast, not the faults of his own personality.

However it was not to be. By this stage he was a very sick man, circumstances only made worse by his insistence during the dark days of the siege of Malta to go on the lowest level of subsistence rations of the common people despite his incredibly high workload. He was an inspiration to all as he cycled endlessly around the island to raise morale and to organise the defences, but his declining physical state eventually overcame even his great willpower. He died before he could have any great effect on Palestine.

Gort fully deserves to be treated with disdain for his command of the British Expeditionary Force in 1940. He was not a good enough general to hold this position. However it would be wrong to suggest that he couldn't be a good enough general. The reason he failed was that others had thrown him into a situation for which he was not yet ready. Had his career been properly run, it is entirely possible that he would have been exactly such a general several years later. As it was, Churchill considered recalling him to active operations in Burma later in the war, which perhaps he could have revealed his real abilities as a more mature Army Corps or Army Commander.

Gort was never a great general, but he was certainly not a bad one either. The worst of his failings were not of his making, and the best aspects of his character revealed flashes of the potential to be one of the most reliable (if not one of the most skilful) generals of the Second World War. Possibly the most useful way to define his place in the ranks of generals, would be to point out that - apart from his senior unit commanders in 1940 - almost everybody who served under him was very impressed with him, and very loyal to him. To his men, he was a good general. How many generals can say that?

Monday, December 6, 2010

The British Pacific Fleet - Misinterpreting the past

I have just finished H. P. Willmott's PhD thesis, published as Grave of a Dozen Schemes. It is a comprehensive analysis of the background to the despatch of the British Pacific Fleet to the final months of the war against Japan.

It is highly researched, very detailed, excellently argued, and completely wrong in it's conclusions.

The interesting question is why is it wrong?

For those who don't know (such as most of the American official historians if you go by their writings), The Royal Navy and it's Commonwealth divisions made a huge contribution to the defeat of Japan despite Admiral King's desperate attempts to keep them out of his private war. The combined orders of battle of the British Eastern Fleet (just finished invading Burma and en-route to invading Malaya), and the British Pacific Fleet (assembling in Australia or fighting off the coast of Japan) at the time of the Japanese surrender was about 700 ships (with more en-route from Europe). This included 6 battleship, 35 aircraft carriers, 23 cruisers, 42 submarines, and over 200 destroyers and escorts. The only reason that it was this low was because the RN was still mostly responsible for major Allied activities in the Atlantic, Arctic Circle, Baltic, Mediterranean, and Indian Oceans. Far more vessels would have been available for the invasion of Japan.

Wilmott's description of the torturous process of getting all the British, Commonwealth and American players to agree on the assembly and dispatch of this force is overwhelmingly detailed. The problems of the repeated failure of the Germans to collapse, and then the suprisingly quick collapse of the Japanese thereafter, is also adequately covered. I have no problems with most of this. What I do have problems with is the conclusions he makes.

Wilmott's main argument is that Britain should not have bothered with this effort, or at least should not have tried to make both the Pacific and Indian Ocean efforts, because it was beyond British power to do so. The factor's he raises are economic exhaustion, lack of ships - particularly fleet train, lack of manpower, and lack of sensible reasons for bothering given that Empire was a thing of the past. He argues all of this with the assumptions of hindsight , and from the safety of a modern academic consensus.

How then is it possible that the Royal Navy had so many ships there at the end, with more on the way? How was it possible that the British successfully invaded Burma, and were preparing to invade Malaya, even while expanding the British fleet operating off the Japanese coast? How could they be doing everything he had assumed was impossible, and succeeding, if it had really been impossible? Why is he arguing so hard against conclusions that his own statistics make evident?

Could it be that he believes what he is saying so strongly, that he is just doing his best to argue around the evidence? Could it be that he is trying to cement his place in academic circles by arguing what is politically correct regardless of the evidence? Or could it be that he knows he is making bad arguments, but also knows he has to do so if he stands any chance of getting a high mark for his PhD from academics who have pre-conceived notions of what they want to hear?

Whatever the reason, the problem is one common to far too many modern academic works. (This was published in 1996 but came out of research originally done in the early 80's.) The author appears to have approached the work with a pre-conceived notion of how things ought to have been viewed, and then forced the facts into that prospective by hook or by crook. (Even if a few slipped out of control in the process.)

The fact is, that the real debate was between Churchill's geo-political preference for British efforts in the Far East to be concentrated on Malaya. the East Indies, Borneo, the China Sea and Hong Kong in the lead up to the invasion of Japan: and the Chief's of Staff Committee's strategic preference to just make a contribution to the naval actions in the Pacific as a cheaper and quicker alternative. (Both considered the efforts wasted on Burma pretty pointless considering that China was never of much value in the war, and both were amused that the eventual speed of Japanese collapse made the Chinese fantasy redundant.) This debate went on for several months.

Wilmott is justified in calling a lot of this debate hot air. He is less justified in claiming that hindsight makes it clear that Churchill's perspective was wrong. He is unconvincing in the argument that everyone should have known that Britain lacked interest in what would happen in Asia in the future. He was, by his own figures, simply wrong to state that Britain lacked the capacity to try.

The debate did take too long, but that might be because things kept changing. Eisenhower's failures in North West Europe, and Germany's surprise survival into a new year, meant that Allied forces could not begin redirection to the east in October 1944 as had been planned. On the other hand Japan's suicidal offensive against India in 1944 opened the opportunity for a faster and cheaper re-conquest of Burma than anyone would have imagined. Similarly Allied plans for offensives through Borneo to Formosa (Taiwan) were initially agreed, then dropped when MacArthur preferred the Philippines, and were then renewed with the Allies agreeing to a British-Australian offensive instead. Only to be dropped again when it became clear that Japan was unexpectedly on it's last legs.

Politically, there is no doubt that had the Allies, or just Britain and Australia, militarily ousted the Japanese from Malaya, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Chinese coast: the decades of violence throughout Asia that followed would have been very different. Churchill's plans may not have been better than what we got, but they would certainly have been different.

Similarly there is no eason to accept that Britain was going to withdraw 'East of Suez' soon after the war at the time decisions were being made. In hindsight it is clear that the British voter was sick of the cost of being the world's policeman, and delighted that the Americans seemed dumb enough to want to take it up. But the Allied documents at the time make it clear that no such plans were in the allied 'mind'. Indeed, American plans to go home as soon as the war in Europe was over argued exactly the opposite.

Then there is the issue of 'power'. Britain, and most of her Dominions and colonies, were at the stage of exhaustion in 1944-5 that any state reaches after 6 years of intense war. (The US was lucky to get out in only 4 years, when the cracks in manpower for the army were only starting to rear their heads.) Nonetheless the way that Wilmott argues that Britain lacked the 'power' for such operations is also self-defeating. After dozens of paragraphs over hundreds of pages about the British lack of troop lift shipping available for the Far East, Wilmott notes in a small aside that such ships can't be spared because Britain is responsible for moving 70,000 US troops per month across the Atlantic. The fact that Britain lacked resources in one theatre because she is making up for American lack of resources in another theatre is studiously ignored.

The truth is of course that the Allies - all of them - lacked the resources to do everything they wanted to do at any time. Britain could have sent plenty of resources to the east had she not being transporting the Americans, supplying the Russians, and feeding the Dutch. Similarly Australia had plenty of resources, food and troops for supporting British Commonwealth operations, except they were deployed to feed, house and support American operations. Indeed according to the US Chiefs of Staff in 1943, America lacked the power to invade Japan without a British fleet, Australian troops, and a Russian Army intervening on the mainland in Asia. (The US COS had a brief hubris in late 1944 when they decided they could manage alone, but by mid 1945 they were busy requesting Britain get 50 aircraft carriers assembled to support 120 of theirs for the invasion... and an army corps please... don't forget landing ships... how about some bombers...)

The simple fact of the matter is that had Britain concentrated its Pacific Fleet resources in the Indian Ocean and Australia to follow the 'middle strategy', it would have been little more costly than the immense effort of projecting a fleet through the central Pacific to the Japanese islands. Malaya, the East Indies, Borneo, possibly Thailand, all might have been liberated before the Japanese surrender by the same shipping efforts that put British carriers at Okinawa and Japan.

Wilmott follows the British COS line that a political solution in Asia was less important than a prestige deployment of British units for the invasion of Japan. He quotes American documents suggesting that the lack of such a presence would have been 'unforgivable' to Americans. He claims that it was vital. Again, he is playing hindsight, and again, he is getting it wrong. How much did Admiral King want the RN sticking it's nose in to his private war? How often did the US COS, in their hubris period, say they didn't need help? How much credit do the history books give the British Pacific Fleet? How many American books fail to mention it?

By contrast how much stability might have been achieved had the British Commonwealth effort gone the other way? Would the Malayan Emergency have happened? Would Indonesia have invaded West Papua and East Timor later? How much stability if Japan had surrendered before Russia entered the war? Would China have gone Communist? Would there have been a Korean or Vietnam war? If you really want to go with hindsight, then Churchill's political forward thinking looks considerably more impressive than the limited strategic viewpoint of the British COS.

Hindsight is almost as fun a game as 'what if', but both are dangerous. People have to be judged on the information and realities of the time, not academic theories based on a misinterpretation of hindsight decades later. Books that twist the facts to come to the conclusions that seem most comfortable or acceptable to people with their own barrows to push are always dangerous.

They are also not history books. They are rationalisations.