OP JB – The Last Great Secret of the Second World War by Christopher Creighton – Book Review

This book purports to tell of a British intelligence plan to kidnap Martin Bormann and bring him out of the ashes of Berlin in 1945, just as the war came to a crashing end.

Indeed the writer insists that that is precisely what he did, accompanied by the late Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, after whom this operation was supposedly named.

You must forgive my scepticism, but the book is so full of amazing and extravagant claims that it makes it difficult to take anything too seriously.

Mister Crieghton claimed to be personal friends with Winston Churchill, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Ribbentrop the German foreign minister, and if that wasn’t enough, throw in the King and good old Adolf himself, with whom he stood on the French cliffs watching allied servicemen being slaughtered during the Dieppe raid. Creighton had provided the Germans with the information of that raid to prove he was a genuine German double agent. Mmm.

Conspiracy theories and outlandish claims abound throughout the 256 pages, such as the fact that the Germans were using Donegal as an active U-boat base, that many of the Battle of Britain pilots were only sixteen, and in some cases, fifteen, and that he personally accounted for, (murdered even?) the entire crew of an allied Dutch submarine that had spotted the Japanese fleet on their way to attack the Americans at Pearl Harbour, to ensure that America came into the war.

The book opens with our Biggles-type hero diving from a British motor torpedo boat into a heavy swell, carrying an unbelievable amount of equipment and weaponry, and swimming into Dublin harbour at the dead of night. Surely any British agent entering the Irish republic would have done so by taking the ferry to Belfast and driving across the unmarked border, or better still, fly across in half in hour, and the job’s done.

There are some weird quasi sexual references sprinkled throughout work, such as the WRENS in his unit were regularly beaten with bamboo canes on the bare buttocks in full view of the men to toughen them up.

My mother was in an intelligence unit in the WRENS through the war and wrote her memoirs afterwards, a book that I have recently revisited. Strangely, she makes no reference to such peculiar practices.

The book climaxes with the successful kidnapping of Bormann from Berlin, as seemingly dozens of allied agents flew in and out on light Lysander aircraft without a care in the world, as the Red Army were smashing Berlin to smithereens.

If you enjoy conspiracy theory books then this is right up your street. You will be amazed at what you didn’t know.

As an afterthought the man went on to become a film director, working in Prague in the sixties when all along he was really engaged on vital work for NATO. No This book purports to tell of a British intelligence plan to kidnap Martin Bormann and bring him out of the ashes of Berlin in 1945, just as the war came to a crashing end.

Indeed the writer insists that that is precisely what he did, accompanied by the late Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, after whom this operation was supposedly named.

You must forgive my scepticism, but the book is so full of amazing and extravagant claims that it makes it difficult to take anything too seriously.

Mister Crieghton claimed to be personal friends with Winston Churchill, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Ribbentrop the German foreign minister, and if that wasn’t enough, throw in the King and good old Adolf himself, with whom he stood on the French cliffs watching allied servicemen being slaughtered during the Dieppe raid. Creighton had provided the Germans with the information of that raid to prove he was a genuine German double agent. Mmm.

Conspiracy theories and outlandish claims abound throughout the 256 pages, such as the fact that the Germans were using Donegal as an active U-boat base, that many of the Battle of Britain pilots were only sixteen, and in some cases, fifteen, and that he personally accounted for, (murdered even?) the entire crew of an allied Dutch submarine that had spotted the Japanese fleet on their way to attack the Americans at Pearl Harbour, to ensure that America came into the war.

The book opens with our Biggles-type hero diving from a British motor torpedo boat into a heavy swell, carrying an unbelievable amount of equipment and weaponry, and swimming into Dublin harbour at the dead of night. Surely any British agent entering the Irish republic would have done so by taking the ferry to Belfast and driving across the unmarked border, or better still, fly across in half in hour, and the job’s done.

There are some weird quasi sexual references sprinkled throughout work, such as the WRENS in his unit were regularly beaten with bamboo canes on the bare buttocks in full view of the men to toughen them up.

My mother was in an intelligence unit in the WRENS through the war and wrote her memoirs afterwards, a book that I have recently revisited. Strangely, she makes no reference to such peculiar practices.
The book climaxes with the successful kidnapping of Bormann from Berlin, as seemingly dozens of allied agents flew in and out on light Lysander aircraft without a care in the world, as the Red Army were smashing Berlin to smithereens.

If you enjoy conspiracy theory books then this is right up your street. You will be amazed at what you didn’t know.

As an afterthought the man went on to become a film director, working in Prague in the sixties when all along he was really engaged on vital work for NATO. No surprise there then.

As proof of the story, library photographs of Bormann, Hitler, Mountbatten and Churchill are reprinted, but none feature the writer together with any of his supposed chums, not even Ian Fleming, and they were as close as close could be if the book is to be believed.

One of the most surprising things about this book is that Simon and Shuster should issue it at all, but even they did so with some reservations, stating rather shamefacedly I thought: “We have been unable to verify the writer’s account by independent research.” Yes, quite.

File it under fiction, treat it for what it is, and you might just enjoy it. Anything more than that, and I’d be amazed, but then again…surprise there then.

As proof of the story, library photographs of Bormann, Hitler, Mountbatten and Churchill are reprinted, but none feature the writer together with any of his supposed chums, not even Ian Fleming, and they were as close as close could be if the book is to be believed.

Book Review: Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks

Among the most illuminating, and hence the most damning recent volume about the war in Iraq is Fiasco, by Thomas E. Ricks. Like other recent books, the author describes in detail the dysfunctional decision-making that has plagued our endeavor in Iraq. But Fiasco highlights the lengthy series of critical turns and cross-roads that we have taken in the nearly four years since the invasion–any of which might have led us away from disaster and toward a stabler and less uncontrollable occupation. And he brings the insights of a career military writer to the task of analyzing what has gone wrong, and how wishful thinking and political turf battles in Washington have placed our soldiers in mortal peril abroad.

A Tragedy in Three Parts

Ricks treats the saga of Iraq as a tragedy in three parts. The first part, dealing with events leading to the invasion, portrays a military far more skeptical of the looming adventure than the public was aware, or the politicians would permit to become public knowledge. Though the Bush Administration was elected in part on a platform of support for a neglected military and opposition to the nation-building adventures of the Clinton years, the shock of September 11th soon turned into contingency planning for an invasion of Iraq–an old enemy uninvolved in the actual attack, but expressing sympathy for America’s enemies. Apparently, however, this occurred without much thought for what might happen next. Upon taking office, the civilian leadership of the defense department had effectively neutered its generals, turning them into staff assistants for an overbearing secretary of defense. A long-standing contingency plan for just such an invasion–a battle plan named Desert Crossing, the culmination of years of in-depth planning that called for nearly 400,000 troops–had been discarded in favor of a test of Donald Rumsfeld’s theories about waging a “lean and mean” war. As a result, we invaded Iraq with forces totaling just over a third of the original number. While Iraq’s military proved no match for the scaled-down invasion force, the task of maintaining order once Saddam’s regime had fallen would prove to be more demanding than the optimistic assumption of the war planners ever acknowledged as a possibility. The result was, in Ricks’ words, “the worst war plan in American history.”

The remainder of the book deals with the invasion and ensuing occupation, as well as the many miscalculations that have led us to our current state of affairs. Most of our initial mistakes were blunders by our political leaders, and those they sent to oversee the occupation. But some of the problems were institutional and would have required insightful leadership to overcome. Despite Rumsfeld’s contrary preferences, for example, American military tradition in recent years has come to believe in Colin Powell’s doctrine of “overwhelming force.” Simply put, this called for application of American might that is so vast and irresistible that it buries all resistance by its mass, as well as through the power of its destructive force. Yet the techniques for fighting a counterinsurgency are completely different, calling for minimal forces and a light, deft touch rather than the heavy hand of tanks and armor. If confronted with an enemy of insurgents, the American way of massed power tends to be counterproductive, since it runs the risk of creating more enemies than it can kill.

Forgotten Lessons

As Ricks shows, these are all lessons which our military learned painfully in Vietnam, but cast aside after resolving never to become entangled in anything like it again. In Iraq, however, the politicians anticipated that we would be hailed as liberators and greeted with flowers instead of roadside bombs, and the military war-gamed against the Republican Guard rather than the Fedayeen. But in Rumsfeld’s defense department, acknowledging the possibility that things might go differently was viewed as disloyal, and so little thought and no training was given to the challenge of fighting against a determined insurgency. This led many of our units in the field to engage in heavy-handed tactics that did little to quell unrest, but much to swell the ranks of the insurgents. Now, with the streets filled with sectarian violence and an unfolding civil war, our troops can either come down heavily to restore order, or try to stay out of the way. Both approaches carry significant risks and the possibility of disaster; neither approach is what we expect our Army to do, or what any of the soldiers expected when they volunteered to serve their country. And with Iraq now spiraling out of control, we find that all our massive firepower has lost much of its utility, and our troops find themselves caught in the crossfire between warring factions.

This book, and others like it, raise many unsettling questions that the country would have been wise to consider before the president issued the final order to attack. Its biggest contribution to our understanding of events is in recounting many of our blunders in terms and concepts that the non-military layman can readily grasp. The book provides a wealth of information and insight, but in the end confronts the reader with a sobering assessment of what can go wrong when the optimism and resolve of our public leaders manage to convince the public that doubt or skepticism is the same as disloyalty.