Summary: Two masterpieces of Second World War history that show the terrifyingly human face of the monstrous

Gitta Sereny’s subjects in these two seminal works are the war crimes and the industrialised genocides of the Nazis. But, as the prisms through which she explores these issues are the biographies of Franz Spangl and Albert Speer, she never loses sight, or lets the reader lose sight, of one of the most troubling truths about these, and all, atrocities: that the war criminals and monsters who perpetrate them are as human as any one of us.

Albert Speer on trial in Nuremberg

Speer was, amongst other roles, Hitler’s armaments minister and Sereny’s biography of him is rich in detail regarding the management of Germany’s wartime economy and Speer’s exceptionally effective efforts in keeping it functioning in the face of Allied bombing, Nazi in-fighting and Hitlerian fantasy. Stangl was a provincial police officer, transferred into the Nazis’ early experiments of murder with their “mercy killing” programme, and finally “promoted” to manage the death camp at Treblinka. The two biographies therefore provide chilling insights into both the highest echelons of Nazism and the horrific consequence of the decisions taken there.

Franz Stangl in prison in Dusseldorf

Sereny’s thorough research into her subjects included extensive interviews with both men. Almost of necessity she came to establish considerable sympathetic understanding with them. But she never lost sight of what they did. Her conversations in Dusseldorf prison with Stangl forced him, with devastating personal effect, to finally acknowledge what he had done. Speer, a much more intelligent man, arguably one with the potential for greatness, was altogether a more slippery character, and so much more sophisticated in evading, even to himself, similar acknowledgement of his measure of responsibility for the crimes of the Nazis. At the end of the war he had all but deluded himself into believing that the Allies would ask him to help lead in the reconstruction of a devastated Germany.

In spite of the bleakness of the books’ subjects they are not devoid of heroism: In Into That Darkness Rudy Masarek, a leader of the Treblinka uprising, stands in telling contrast to Stangl; in the case of Speer Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the 20 July plot against Hitler, stands in juxtaposition. Though they appear only fleetingly in the pages of these books the lives of these men, with their exceptional moral and physical courage, powerfully indict the evasions of both Stangl and Speer. These were men who came from similar backgrounds but whose moral choices were diametrically opposed to everything that Stangl and Speer came to stand for.

These are amongst the most extraordinary and important works of non-fiction of the 20th Century. They are compelling studies of the descent into evil of one ordinary man and an extraordinary one. They are powerful, elegantly written, gripping and vital for understanding how close to the abyss human beings and human society still hovers.

Max Hastings presents the world with two personae. There is the curmudgeonly right-wing journalist, scion of the Establishment and apologist for the British military. Then there is the historian, who comes across as a wholly different sort of beast, his historical work pervaded with a great sense of humanity and of the pity of war. 

With this book, Max Hastings the historian has completed a body of work on the Second World War comparable to Shelby Foote’s magisterial history of the American Civil War. This book fills some of the gaps in the history of the war not covered by his more detailed studies (Overlord on the battle for Normandy; Armageddon on the last year of the war in Europe; Nemesis on the last year of the war in the Pacific; Warlord, his study of Churchill’s war leadership; and Bomber Command). So there is greater consideration here of, for example, the invasion of Poland, the war in the Mediterranean, the major naval campaigns such as the Battle of the Atlantic and the Arctic Convoys, and amongst the most chilling chapters, a discussion on the war in the Balkans. Naturally, however the discussion of the war’s final campaigns are more cursory here given Hastings’ other writings.

One of the things about Hastings’ historical work that is so delightful is that even if one is familiar with much of the narrative of the events he will often bring new detail or insight to the discussion. This book does not disappoint in this regard: the retreat from Stalingrad, for example, is told principally from an Italian perspective; and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is discussed through the idea of “technological determinism” which Hastings sees as shaping key aspects of the Allied campaign, particularly the B29 bomber offensive on Japan. By this he means that when a military capacity exists there can become an overwhelming motivation to use it irrespective of the strategic value: it is an idea that also helps illuminates the dynamics behind some questionable dashes into war, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

There is also a great fair-mindedness to Hastings’ historical writing, acknowledging, given the comparable horror of both Soviet and Nazi tyrannies (something that Timothy Synder explores in greater detail in his exceptional book Bloodlands), that for many eastern Europeans the war never could appear the clear cut battle between good and evil it has become in Anglo-American mythology. Hastings also points out how that Anglo-American myth must take some tarnishing given Britain’s role in the Indian wartime famine, the Anglo-American betrayal of Poland, and some of the needless blood shed by the Allies in the Pacific.

Overall a great work of narrative history, elegantly written with a seeming effortlessness that belies the great learning it contains.

The Speed of Light uses the same author-in-search-of-a-story device as Javier Cercas’s previous superb novel of the Spanish Civil War, Soldiers of Salamis. At its core the book is a meditation on how war breeds atrocity and the consequences of atrocity on the perpetrators – the murdered are barely mentioned and only fleetingly considered.

However while a gripping read it ultimately is significantly less satisfying a book than the author’s earlier one about the Spanish Civil War. As one of the characters says to the narrator in The Speed of Light – “you can’t understand because you haven’t killed”. And because the author – presumably not a killer either – does not understand he cannot explain. Instead he describes, recounts and tries to empathise. This is an honourable exercise, but it provides little insight to this subject. Furthermore the author’s blurring of the distinction between himself and his protagonist leads, I found, to great difficulty in trusting the account itself and hence the insight the author offers.

Nevertheless the book is elegantly written and translated, and it is thought-provoking. Perhaps it will lead some to revisit actual histories of the Vietnam war, particularly Four Hours at My Lai, which deals much more directly and insightfully with the realities of war-crimes.

War is a book derived from the author’s time spent with an American combat unit in Afghanistan. It is is an exceptionally honest and thoughtful meditation on battle, what it does to combatants and the nature of courage.

Junger frequently allows himself into the story but by and large avoids the “journalist as hero” cliche, using his presence as a surrogate for the reader, trying to make sense, with occasional reflection on social science and history, on what he is seeing and experiencing.

The book generally eschews context, both geo-politcal as well as local, with the voices of Afghans barely heard, and the politics of the region largely undiscussed. Junger argues, not unreasonably, that this is beyond the scope of his research focus. Nevertheless the book remains vital for understanding the risks inherent in waging this type of war. If the reader bothers to contemplate this book beyond the fine writing and gripping descriptions of battle, death and survival, they will find an unsettling moral: if courage is love, as Junger argues convincingly that it is, then the loyalty that breeds may also provide, at least sometimes, the basis for individual participation in atrocity and cover up.

Twenty years on from Kapuchinski’s exceptional account of the coming of Angolan independence, Another Day of Life, Judith Matloff, an American journalist, reported on the country. Subsequently she produced this book, one of the best English language books on modern Angolan history.

Matloff covers a period which I found particularly compelling because it was that just before the time I worked in Angola myself. She gives us a fine narrative account of these years of continuing civil war, between the governing MPLA and the rebel UNITA movement under the leadership of the psychotic Jonas Savimbi, and the stumbling, ultimately illusory efforts towards peace. Her work is rooted in attention to the history and culture of Angola with a focus on the impact the slaughter had upon the ordinary people. Matloff allows herself into the story occasionally, but with refreshing honesty about her weaknesses and mistakes, avoiding the “journalist as hero” cliche.

Matloff’s title reminds the reader how the bloodshed of Angola’s protracted war was generally ignored by the world for years on end. It is a pity that the book itself also seems to have become as forgotten in the West as the Angolan war was. This is war reportage in the finest tradition of Martha Gelhorn.