Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

World War 2 (executive summary)

cliffski

I’ve been reading a huge 5 or 6 volume book called ‘World War II’. A bit of an arrogant title, assuming you can cover the whole topic, but it was written shortly after the war by Winston Churchill, so he’s allowed some slack. Obviously it’s insanely long, and I’m only on volume 3, but it’s fascinating stuff, especially when you are working on a battle game :D.
Here is some of the stuff that has stood out as interesting to me so far.

1) Invasion of Poland my ass. We get taught in school that this is when WW2 started, but thats bullshit. Hitler had already frogmarched into a number of countries by then, and Mussolini had been misbehaving too. We didn’t officially declare war with Germany until then, but the idea that this was sudden or even slightly unexpected is wrong. There was tons of obvious buildup.

2) Everyone thought England was fucked. The Germans assumed they could conquer us, The Americans had strong doubts we will hold out any longer than the French. (They wouldn’t send us arms that they secretly thought would end up in the hands of conquering Germans).  The global consensus was that England would fall next, and Hitler would have the whole of Europe soon. Nobody took seriously the idea of the Brits fighting to the death.

3) The British Navy was fearsome. We kicked ass in terms of naval combat. The Germans didn’t really try to engage the royal navy, because they were just outgunned and they knew it. The story of ship v ship combat (ignoring subs) for the first part of the war, was the royal navy tracking down enemy ships and sinking them. No wonder we have this ‘brittania rules the waves’ lyric.

4) The battle of britain was vital purely because it stopped Germany having air cover for a seaborne invasion of the UK. They knew their ships wouldn’t make it over the channel without air superiority, which is why they tried to take out our air force. The whole bombing of cities was just plan B after it was obvious that an invasion was impossible

5) The Italian army was rubbish. Really hilariously bad. There were some engagements where it was literally a 100 to 1 ratio of British troops lost to Italians killed or captured. That’s just laughable. This isn’t knocking the Italians, it’s probably just that the average Italian soldier wasn’t as keen on the war as the Duce. Good for them!

6) Churchill was on the ball. This was not some upper class twit drinking port and leaving the war to the military. He was intimately aware of troop dispositions, strategy, diplomacy, economics, and always hassling everyone to get things done better, faster, and with more enthusiasm. He was determined to take the fight to the enemy, and a big believer in using new technology to win the war.

It’s especially amazing to read Churchills multi-thousand page history of the war, know all about Bletchley park, and notice he never even hints at what went on. Talk about keeping a secret…

I’m sure in 4 years time when I finally finish the books, I’ll have more to report :D If you have a million hours of free time, I recommend it as a fascinating read.

I’m working on the UI for a custom challenge editor thing…

12 thoughts on World War 2 (executive summary)

  1. Props to Britain, they single-handed held back Germany for months with pretty much zero hope of survival if America didn’t enter. And equal props to Winston Churchill, without whom Britain probably would have crumbled. I guess he had plenty of time to write after they voted him out of office nine days into a peace conference. :/

  2. It seems harsh, but Churchill was generally a bad PM with some unpopular views, but he was an awesome PM to have during a war, due to incredible experience and knowledge in that area.
    He really was in the perfect place at the perfect time for his particular skills.

  3. By all accounts he was treated pretty badly after the war. Something along the lines of ‘yeah, thanks the war is over so bugger off’

  4. You might want to also read an analysis of armored combat during WWII called The Blitzkrieg Myth. Naturally I have no idea how accurate it is, but it’s a really interesting point of view, especially after watching and reading Generation Kill.

  6. That book is a great read, both as history and as literature. Churchill left out the code-breaking information, as it was not public knowledge yet, but otherwise it is a complete look at the war from his perspective. I wish we had more such books from world leaders.

    Keep in mind that Churchill lost the election following WWII, and was writing to secure his place in history, his financial well being, and to get himself relected (which he later was).

    If you want to read a great companion book, David Reynolds’ “In Command of History” chronicles the process of writing that book (a significant amount of money, time and staff were involved), and the history of the period. Great stuff.

  7. I actually think the ejection of Churchill by the British public after the war speaks volumes about their relative lack of sentimentality, and their collective wisdom. He was a wartime prime minister, but was unashamedly old school in his social outlook, and that just didn’t suit the British after their privations during the war. It was time for real social change.

    I suppose once that change had been effected, he was deemed suitable for leadership again in the 50s.

  8. mmmm, interesting… I always thougth that europe schools were better than south americans ones… All you said I learned in school… Maybe , because you were involve in the conflict, have more myths about it….

  9. “All you said I learned in school…” Same here and I’m from Europe (eastern). BTW It was Poles who broke the Enigma, long before the war even started!

  10. Yes but iirc, Enigma was a series of cypher machines first invented at the end of WWI, the Poles broke a later version from the early 30s and some of them escaped to Britain with that code. However, they stopped using the version the Poles broke because of problems with it.
    The Bletchley team then broke the more difficult cypher later on, inventing the first computer to do so.

    Sounds like a great book Cliff, I’ll have to add it to my reading list :-)

  12. > BTW It was Poles who broke the Enigma, long before the war even started!

    Wasn’t the design of Enigma based on a pre-war Polish commercial cypher machine? Or am I misremembering?

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