Exclusive interview with author Gordon Corrigan and a review of his book about World War II
Rating: 3 stars
Reviewed by Gabrielle Pantera
“I haven’t won any awards, but I have had four death threats, which is almost as good and far more fun,” says The Second World War author Gordon Corrigan. His previous book, Mud, Blood and Poppycock, raised controversy as a revisionist account of Britain in WWI that gave sympathetic explanations for the mistakes of British generals that prompted one German general to describe brave British soldiers slaughtered on the battlefield as ‘lions led by donkeys’.
The Second World War is not controversial but is thoroughly explored in nearly 700 pages. Despite the length, Corrigan’s writing is easy to read. This book is for anyone who wants to know about the conflict. It is straightforward due to the author’s dry wit and clear writing style. A historian, Corrigan compares WWII with previous wars. He’s not timid about voicing his opinion of actions during the war. Corrigan explores the different ways each country went about dealing with their part of the war. Even though there were alliances, rarely did they work together in accord. Corrigan discusses the different contributions the Americans, British and Russians made. The book presents in chronological order and moves back and forth between countries. A large portion of the book covers fighting in Asia.
Corrigan found some of his preconceived ideas were overturned once he began serious research. “I had always rather written off ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stillwell as an unhelpful curmudgeonly Anglophobe,” says Corrigan “Whereas I now think he had the most difficult job of any commander in the Far Eastern war and who did his best to contribute while having to placate corrupt Chinese politicians and incompetent Chinese generals. General Slim, the British commander in Burma found him very easy to work with once through the protective hedge of his staff.
“I had always considered Douglas MacArthur to be a publicity-seeking, womanizing dilettante,” says Corrigan. “… but he was also a very competent general, whose soubriquet of ‘Dugout Doug’ when he was conducting a skillful defense of Bataan when hopelessly outclassed was most unfair. He was, I think, quite right to advocate, unsuccessfully, one Pacific approach not two, and to press, again unsuccessfully, for one overall commander in the Pacific.”
Around 2007 Corrigan decided to write a complete history of the Second World War. “It should now be far enough away for us to come to some objective conclusions untainted by national propaganda,” says Corrigan. “I had already written about the Peninsula War, the First World War and some of the myths of the Second World War.”
For research, Corrigan started with the official histories of the USA, the USSR and the UK. The nearest thing he found to a German official history is the nine-volume (with more to come) Germany and the Second World War, produced by the German Research Institute for Military History and translated and published by Oxford University Press. For Italian and Japanese versions he relied mainly on secondary sources, although the British military attaché in Rome was able to help with Italian accounts. Corrigan ploughed through the archives, read memoirs and diaries, looked at contemporary maps and visited as many of the battlefields as he could.
“What takes the time in producing a work of history is of course the research, not the writing itself,” says Corrigan. “ A very helpful chum in the USA looked at American sources for me.” Corrigan viewed documents at The British National Archives, the British Library, the German Federal Archives and various university libraries.
Corrigan is currently writing A Military History of The Hundred Years War, 1337 – 1453. “It was marvelous time when the English kept bashing the French, which is always fun,” says Corrigan. The book will be published in September 2012.
Corrigan was born and still lives in the UK. He shares his wife’s website www.medieval-lecture.com .
The Second World War: A Military History by Gordon Corrigan . Hardcover, 672 pages, Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (November 8, 2011), Language: English, ISBN: 9780312577094 $35.00.
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