Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II - Len Deighton

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who left her job as a chef to become a skilled oxyacetylene welder making flame traps for night-fighters. Thousands of women like her, building airplanes, tanks and ships, were immortalized in America by the ‘Rosie the Riveter’ campaign. Britain’s survival during the leanest days of the war owes a debt of gratitude to the Women’s Land Army. These hard-working women succeeded in cultivating every available square foot of land and saved the country from starvation when the U-boat campaign was at its most successful.

      The extraordinary women of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry created a secret unit that was dropped by parachute behind enemy lines to undertake espionage work for the Special Operations Executive. Bletchley Park’s work in cracking the ‘Enigma’ codes is well known, and many of the brilliant code-breakers were women. The magnificent women ferry-pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary flew everything from fast and nimble Spitfire fighters to large and powerful Lancaster heavy bombers, many with battle damage and in need of repair. The Royal Air Force and Royal Navy depended on an army of women radar controllers to manage their operations in the air and at sea.

      The contribution to the war made by women was not limited to Britain. In America Jacqueline Cochrane’s famous Women’s Airforce Service Pilots ferried military aircraft, while flight nurses – the unsung heroines of the US Army – provided critical medical attention to wounded soldiers, saving lives on both the European and Pacific fighting fronts. In Russia, too, all the Red Army’s nurses were women. Those serving as front-line medics were also armed and expected to fight alongside their male comrades when not attending to the wounded. Their casualty rate was approximately equal to that of the Red Army infantry. These women demonstrated that they were every bit as willing to help win a war against an enemy that threatened the life they knew. Together they blazed a trail for equality and their lasting contribution to today’s society deserves to be recognized.

      Blood, Tears and Folly is a history of the Second World War concentrating on the early years when Britain and her dominions came near to defeat. The German navy’s use of advanced diesel-electric submarines and the four-rotor Enigma machine almost succeeded in starving Britain of raw materials and food. The Type VII is the iconic U-boat of the Battle of the Atlantic. During the early part of the war they were painted in a resplendent three-colour scheme, including a bright red hull below the waterline (they were later painted solid grey to make them less visible). Built by Krupp Germaniawerft in Kiel and launched in 1938, U-47, a Type VIIB commanded by Günther Prien that sank thirty ships including the battleship HMS Royal Oak, begins as a line-drawn plan on the back cover before appearing menacingly in full colour on the front. The front-cover photograph of a group of Wrens qualifying at the pistol range exemplifies Britain’s plucky resolve in the face of extreme adversity. This defiant attitude played an important role in convincing a sceptical United States to support Britain in its war against Germany.

      Antoni Deighton, 2013

       Illustrations

      PLATES

       1 Before Munich – Winston Churchill talks earnestly in Whitehall to Lord Halifax, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, after returning from the Continent in March 1938

       2 General Wilhelm Keitel, Hitler’s Army Chief of Staff, in conversation with the Führer on a flight to Munich in March 1938

       3 Hitler receives Prime Minister Chamberlain at Obersalzberg in September 1938 – the prime move in ‘appeasement’

       4 Admirals Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz planning the German U-boat campaign in the North Atlantic, October 1939

       5 Six days after becoming prime minister, Churchill flew to France for talks on the imminent collapse with General Gamelin and General Lord Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, May 1940

       6 General Erwin Rommel, after sweeping through France in May 1940, became the notorious ‘Desert Fox’ of North Africa

       7 Hitler meets the fascist Spanish dictator General Franco, October 1940

       8 General Thomas Blamey, commander of Australian forces in the Middle East, talks to troops just returned from Crete to Palestine

       9 General ‘Dick’ O’Connor with the Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the Middle East, General Sir Archibald Wavell, outside Bardia, Libya, January 1941

       10 General Sir John Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, with the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in Cairo, March 1941

       11 Prime Minister Churchill inspecting part of Britain’s defences in 1940 with a Tommy gun under his arm

       12 Hitler discussing progress of the war with the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, August 1941

       13 The German Luftwaffe chief, Field Marshal Hermann Göring, with his deputy Field Marshal Erhard Milch, March 1942

       14 Joseph Stalin, the Soviet communist dictator

       15 General Douglas MacArthur, Commander-in-Chief of all US forces in the Far East, with President Roosevelt

       16 General Arthur Percival, commander of Allied troops in Malaya – a clever and experienced leader who was utterly vanquished by a ferocious Japanese force employing 6,000 bicycles

       17 Stalin’s trusted General Georgi Zhukov began his career in the Tsar’s dragoons and defeated first the Japanese and then the Germans

       18, 19 General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the ‘Tiger of Malaya’, who was forbidden to return to Japan, and Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, once a student of Harvard University, who master-minded the attack on Pearl Harbor

       20 General Hideki Tojo, first Japan’s war minister and then prime minister

      FIGURES

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