The Withered Garland: Reflections and Doubts of a Bomber

The Withered Garland: Reflections and Doubts of a Bomber

By Peter Johnson.

An autobiographical account by Peter Johnson, who was an RAF pilot during the inter-war period and a reservist at the outbreak of the Second World War. He was drafted back into service as an instructor before requesting transfer to a bomber group. After flying a tour of duty he became commander of a small airfield. After the war was over he was posted to an intelligence group assessing the impact of the British bombing on the German military machine. He is quite the critic of the pre-war international order and is deeply disappointed with the League of Nations response over the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. As the war goes on he becomes disillusioned with the strategic bombing offensive. He notes their poor accuracy and limited strategic use, especially when compared with the huge number of innocent civilians it either kills or displaces. He concludes that the Luftwaffe, RAF and USAF were all equally guilty of war crimes...

Baker Street Irregular

Baker Street Irregular, by Bickham Sweet-Escott.

Published 1965. Written by a former SOE (Special Operations Executive) operative.

The department was newly formed and quite controversial. People in military circles were very dubious of its benefits to begin with but they became highly suspicious after a year when it had produced little for the money it was being given. It had had some limited success in the Balkans but had botched up an attempt to provide counter-invasion equipment to potential resistance fighters and partisans in the event of a Nazi landing…

Post-war dislocation

Following the cessation of hostilities in the European theatre of war in 1945 Europe, shattered and broken from end to end, experienced yet another wide scale migration as the people returned home and others were forcibly removed from liberated areas, particularly millions of German people that suddenly found their homes outside the borders of their former Reich. This migration in many ways fundamentally shaped post-war Europe and set the demographic landscape for the coming cold war...

Why not trust the Tories?

By Aneurin Bevan 1944.

Bevan was a Labour MP from a poor coal mining family in Wales. He become a leader of the Trade Union movement and was an MP during the Second World War. Following Labour’s ‘landslide’ victory after the war he was made the Minister for Health by Clement Atlee. He built his legacy up by leading through the establishment of the National Health Service.

He publish this in the run up to the general election of 1945 and it is clearly a highly polemical account aimed at exposing the folly of Tories, both past and present and therefore leaves the Labour Party as the only real choice for real social reform. Which is what, by a growing consensus, the British people were looking for.

Ordinary Men

By Christopher R Browning.

This is something of a classic in the understandably modern field of holocaust studies. Browning’s book exploded onto the historical scene and caused all sorts of uproar which prompted a flurry of publications condemning it or rushing to its rescue. The cause of the controversy is in his underlying argument which states that the circumstances in which the perpetrators of the holocaust found themselves in were not as extreme as one might first believe and nor were the characters involved in any sense unique. People are not born killers, but rather society makes them into killers is what he is saying. But more than this. It is not just nazi society that can create killers, it is in essence any society. The mechanics of human communities inevitably relies on a natural desire to conform. It is this desire, at the very root of all human social organisation, that leads to situations in which ‘ordinary men’ can be made killers, despite any personal misgivings they might have. The desire to conform with ones peers is a deeply motivating one and overrides almost everything else. As Browning himself puts it:

“Within virtually every social collective, the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behaviour and sets moral norms. If the [ordinary] men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?”

I have to say that I agree.

Different types of perpetrators

Lengthy (in comparison) notes on those that actually carried out the killings during the holocaust. Focusing most on the Einzatsgruppen who were in effect the death squads that would follow hot on the heels of the conquering German army into Russia and murder all Jews and other 'undesirables' such as Communist sympathisers. The notes also include thoughts on the possible motivations for the others involved, such as the police detachments, the German army (the Wehrmacht) and local groups of anti-Semites.