The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer

Haven't posted anything here in a while but wanted to for this book.

This work recounts the author's time in the German army during WWII.  Involved in the initial stages of Germany's retreat in the East all the way to the end of the war, the author experienced the worst of what the conflict had to offer and describes it in full detail.

The blood, the cold, the depravity, the cowardice, the heroism, the anger, hatred, frustration, disillusionment, starvation, mutilation...its all here.  Sajer doesn't shy away from his own failings and the work comes across as a beautifully honest recount of his service.  Which isn't to say the book should be taken as a pure academic recap of the German effort of WWII in the East.  It isn't.  It has inaccuracies as others have pointed out.  That's not the overall point and Sajer has been one to say so.

Its more of an emotional synopsis of his experience and the reader comes away with the feeling that no one should have survived what he went through and certainly no one sane could have.

This work is not one to delve into the issues behind Germany's efforts, there is really little mention of Hitler and zero mention of the Holocaust or other well known events of the war and its evils.  If you are looking for that or for Sajer to fall on his knees and beg forgiveness for having fought on the losing side, this is not your book.

If you are looking for an epically honest depiction of the German grunt's viewpoint of how it felt to be driven backwards by the unstoppable masses of Russian soldiers over a period of years through the worst of living conditions, then this is more appropriate.

I have not read a more vivid description of the obscene nature of ground warfare anywhere.  Nowhere else have I felt it better shown the indifferent nature of combatants as to their superiors motives or overarching goals, rather these are purely men fighting for the man next to them and merely in the hope of living to see another day.  Politics and preaching are absent here...as you come to realize, they are in all trenches.

This?? Oh Nothing...Just a Fez From a Waffen SS Division Member...

This was within a private collection I visited in the recent past that brought to my attention the fact that there was an ever so nice connection between the Nazis and Muslims of Europe and the Mid-East in WWII.

This division of Bosnian Muslims was one of many efforts made between the Nazis and Muslims throughout Europe and the Mid-East to reach common goals--namely the extermination of those that they both found undesirable.  Hell, even a Grand Mufti from Jerusalem was flown in to assist in the recruiting of Muslims into the Nazi ranks.  They were known for their brutality and massacre of Serbs more than they were for their fighting excellence.  No terrorists here...just your usual genocidal maniacs.  And the skull??  Well its a real skull, just a prop though, not an actual dead Handzar SS Division Muslim...

Book Review: The First War of Physics--The Secret History of the Atom Bomb 1939-1949

Been a bit since I've posted anything--holiday season and all so we'll start off slow.

The above titled book by Jim Baggot is no lightweight coming in at nearly 600 pages. Baggot has generally kept the scope of his writing to Physics related topics such as the Higgs Boson, Quantum Theory and other modern topics.  TFWOP reaches back some 70+ years to cover the creation of the first atomic and hydrogen bombs.

The scientists that take part in this story read like a laundry list of Nobel Prize winners including Einstein, Fermi, Bohr, Teller, Heisenberg, Feynman, Oppenheimer, etc., etc. and the book covers them all in one respect or another.  If you are looking for an in depth examination of the Manhattan Project or of the Russian intelligence program that stole many of the US developed "secrets" or of the military history behind the use of these weapons, or a detailed scientific treatise on the physics behind the bombs--that's not what this work is.

What Baggot achieves here is a broad overview of the worldwide effort towards the development and use of atomic weapons during this period.  You get the Germans who were off to an early start but fell behind for numerous (and readily debatable) reasons, you get the Russians playing catch-up with the Americans via their communist sympathizers in the States and England, you get England who had a well developed program but without the necessary resources and you get the US who is the beneficiary of massive industrial scale, and a combination of its own scientists and the flight of brilliant European theoreticians due to Hitler's policies.

In essence you get a primer on all four of the major atomic efforts at this time and a look at why each one succeeded or failed and their influence, either direct or indirect on one another.  There is enough here to satisfy the "spy enthusiast" involving secret missions of sabotage and assassination as well as the amateur physics buff with "lensing" discussions, stories behind the discovery of the various elements and their isotopes and the trial and error development of how to achieve a supercritical mass.

I feel vastly more knowledgeable about the events that went on to largely shape our modern world over the following half century or more than I was before reading this book.  Most impressive to me is that all of the work attributed to these scientists was done wholly without the benefit of modern computing power.  All theories, formulas, calculations, experiments, monitoring, and measurements were done with what we would view as archaic devices and methods, doing things by hand that we would task to an electronic device today.  That they were able to develop these devices in such an environment is astonishing--and this book should leave the reader with the appropriate sense of awe over just what the force of the human mind can accomplish.

Cool Photo From Germany...

No, I won't use the "N" word here (rhymes with Yahtzee) as that just brings up all sorts of ugly feelings and makes people think that one is promoting a certain political or sociological agenda.

I just have a fascination with aircraft, militaria and technology in general and thought this was a cool photo.

You have here a Messerschmidt BF-109 undergoing wind tunnel testing.  It always amazes me how advanced some things were some 80 years ago, yet so undeveloped at the same time.  Nowadays this would all be done in a computer or at the very least, in a computerized windtunnel.  With this photo?  Maybe they used high speed (film) cameras and pieces of yarn to try and get an idea of the flow of air over a vehicle.  Lots of slide-rulers and pencil and paper were expended that's for sure.

I also enjoy seeing photos like these as in my minds eye, historical vehicles just kind of appear on the scene and I don't think about all the infrastructure, time, testing and calculation that went into their development.  Seeing one such famous airplane in its build/testing phase just seems kinda cool--as does the scale of the huge windtunnel vs. the airplane itself and the little engineers below.