[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.]
I'm often surprised by the books that historians haven't written. The years I am researching are between two and three generations distant, yet it's not hard to find (what seem to me to be) big, important topics which deserve to have academic monographs devoted to them, but have somehow been neglected. Sometimes this might be a matter of historiographical fashion: the cultural turn in military history is still relatively young, for example, and not all areas have been touched by it yet. In others there already exists a detailed account, which was written decades ago and seems to have obviated the need for further research. Sometimes the gap in the literature seems inexplicable. And, OK, sometimes the topic isn't all that big and important, it's just obscure ...
Here are some of the unwritten books I think I know of in my field:
- The Sudeten crisis. Of course, there are multiple accounts of this from the diplomatic, political and (to a lesser extent) military perspectives. Though, surprisingly, this is generally only at the chapter level -- there aren't many books on the Sudeten crisis proper (as opposed to the 'lessons of Munich') more recent than Keith Robbins' Munich 1938 (1968). But what I'm thinking of is the crisis in Britain: a synoptical account of, yes, diplomatic, political, and military responses, but more importantly, the crisis as it impacted on and was perceived by the public. Public opinion, the press, private diaries and correspondence. How did the crisis alter Britain's preparedness for war, both materially and psychologically? Maybe even the counterfactual question, too.
- Air raid precautions. I know of nothing more recent than the relevant volume of the official history of the Second World War, Terence H. O'Brien's Civil Defence (1955). There have been books on aspects of ARP, evacuation seems fairly popular, for example, and some on civilian morale which are relevant. But the political, bureaucratic and financial issues involved in ARP after 1935 (or maybe early 1938) had far-reaching implications, and led to debates about conscription, democracy and deep shelters which reveal ideologies at work. O'Brien is very thorough on the legal and organisational aspects, but he was writing more than half a century ago: surely there's something new to say? And he was not much interested in popular assent to or dissent from the government's ARP regulations, for example.
- Transnational airmindedness.
- The Scareship Age.
- Britain and the Bomb. A bit outside of my field, so maybe I've missed something. What I'm thinking of is a cultural history of British responses to the possibility of nuclear warfare, from Lord Vansittart through CND, The War Game, Where the Wind Blows, Threads and "Two Tribes". There are many books on American atomic culture, and rightly so, but there must be enough material for at least one British equivalent. Something like Paul Boyer's By the Bomb's Early Light (1985), perhaps.
- The Blitz. As a correspondent pointed out to me, rather incredibly there have been no academic monographs written about the Blitz. Again, there's the official histories, but it's spread out across a number volumes: O'Brien again, Richard Titmuss's Problems of Social Policy (1950) and Basil Collier's The Defence of the United Kingdom (1957). And of course it's central to histories of the home front, and there's Angus Calder's The Myth of the Blitz (1991), which is more about the memory of the Blitz than than the Blitz itself. And any number of popular works. But nothing by academic historians trying to pull all these threads together.
- Zeppelin and Gotha raids. Ditto, pretty much, though in this case there's much less to draw together because not a lot has been written about the British experience of bombing in the First World War since Barry D. Powers' Strategy With-out Slide Rule (1976), not by academics at least.
Somebody needs to write these books! And if they could get them published in the next six months or so, I'd really appreciate it :)
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On both Civil Defence and the Bomb, former QM PhD student Dr Matt Grant is your best bet: http://www.shef.ac.uk/history/staff/matthew_grant.html
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I think you just laid out your academic writing career.
I myself am still waiting for a good institutional history of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force.
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Dan:
Thanks, I look forward to reading his book when it comes out! Though, the literature on Cold War civil defence almost seems burgeoning compared with the WWI/WWII period -- maybe due to the lack of the deadening presence of an official history? Or maybe because of the inspiration from studies of American civil defence in the same period?
George:
Well, some of those I might consider taking on one day, however in general the best plan is to 1. hatch chickens; 2. count chickens ...
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Dr Jeff Hughes at Manchester has done stuff on Cold War Culture and the bomb - I don't know whether it's the kind of stuff you're looking for.
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Didn't the Official History of Civil Defence go through several different authors? I don't know whether that implies that it's a tough subject to write about, or whether it tells us more about the inter-personal relations of the official historians. I agree that something that talked more about voluntarism versus compulsion in ARP and CD would be very useful: I also think that the post-41 culture of home defence, both civil and military, is worthy of an integrating study. Penny Summerfield and Corinna Peniston-Bird's book on the Home Guard shows something of what's out there, but there's loads more to be done, particularly on the direct transition into the Cold War.
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Have you read "BENEATH THE CITY STREETS" by PETER LAURIE ?.
It was first published in the early 1970s,based on an interesting SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE article on British Civil Defence.
The book was republished in 1979 in an updated edition.
It covers how Britain planned and built to face the threat of the Zepplin,Bombers and ICBM. -
Jakob:
Thanks! Cold War stuff is just idle curiosity for me at the moment, so it's all good.
Dan:
You're right! O'Brien was the 5th author to try it: one died, one had to go back to the British Museum (Wormald), two didn't even manage to produce a chapter draft. O'Brien himself wasn't able to work at it full-time. It's a big subject, true enough, but whether any more so than the other subjects of official histories, I couldn't say.
I talk about voluntarism vs. compulsion in my current thesis draft but very superficially -- like a page at most -- there is much more that could be said!
Ian:
Thank you, I didn't know of that.
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This thought re-triggered by Brett's post-blogging the Sudeten Crisis.
Will someone please write a "contemporary" account of the Western Front air-war in the ETO in WWII.
Rather than the now familiar hindsight-filled semi-objective analyses, I'd like to read a day-by-day (OK maybe month-by-month) book about that airwar from the POV of the protagonists. Nearest I've ever read is "The Other Battle" by Peter Hinchcliffe (recently deceased BTW) which is IMHO a fascinating objective presentation of the two battling sides in the Western Front night air war (Bomber Command vs Nachtjagd). But again that's a post-war objective analysis.
I'd be fascinated to read a two-sided history containing the prejudices, opinions and "known facts" of the two opposing forces (at that time). For example, Rotterdam would be on the one hand a terrible example of odious terror bombing, and on the other hand an obvious and regrettable snafu (whatever the German is for that) that anyone in his right mind would acknowledge as such.
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Rotterdam's an interesting one. It wasn't reported much in the British press at the time (14 May 1940), but about week later reports appeared that thousands of people had been killed in the raid. It wasn't until July that the claims of 30,000 dead were being circulated, coming via the Dutch government-in-exile. The true figure was something under a thousand, so whether the 30,000 number was propaganda from one side or the other (most likely the Germans I suppose, but could have been the Dutch themselves) or just a rumour, I don't know.
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Pingback from Airminded · On being a snob on 20 December 2008 at 12:37 am
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"O'Brien is very thorough on the legal and organisational aspects, but he was writing more than half a century ago: surely there's something new to say?"
There's a new book out which covers the clash between anti-civil defence disarmers and civil defence realists in the 1920s and 1930s:
Professor Susan R. Grayzel, “At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz” (Cambridge University Press, 2012). Pages 149-76 document the idealism propaganda versus dirty facts battle. The Womens International League (WIL) Executive Committee in May 1935 stated that civil defence (Air Raid Precautions, ARP) could cause a war (Grayzel, p173):
"Such preparation is bound to contribute to the creation of a war mentality, which in itself is a contributory factor in causing war. ... Where children are obliged to share in such preparations it is highly probable that such an experience will have a harmful effect on them. ... Preparation of the people for gas attack is furthe to be deplored, because it is based on the assumption that obligations not to resort to war but which all the Governments concerned are bound, are not going to be kept. We believe this to be bad psychologically."
The Womens International League was then the first group to oppose the first (July 1935) Government ARP circular, stating a falsehood that civil defence was not an effective countermeasure: "the only measure of effective defence of the people from Air attack is the abolition of War Aircraft by all countries."
Wonderful idealistic idea, but how is the Government actually supposed to get fanatics to disarm without either coercion which risks starting the very war you're trying to avoid, or else unilateral disarmament and being coerced into joining the Third Reich? No answer. Grayzel continues the story, p174:
"When the Executive Committee of the British Section of the WIL learned of official plans for 'the supply of gas masks to the whole population', it deputized member Kathleen Innes to write a letter to the press pointing out that the only defense against poison gas was 'abolition'. ... A similar point was raised by Captain Philip Mumford's 1936 Humanity, Air Power and War, which asserted that a future air war might well destroy civilization. The solution, akin to that proposed by Swanwick, was that 'all air power must be removed beyond the reach of nationalism'. Mumford emphasized that 'the ordinary civilian ... can have no defence or protection'.
Pseudoscience was also published by the "Cambridge Scientists' Anti-War Group" in its 1937 book The Protection of the Public from Aerial Attack, which ignored the weather and exaggerated gas concentrations and used such deluded technical sophistry to "disprove" the value of British gas masks in deterring Nazi gas attacks (Grayzel, p175):
"Taking on the conflation of aerial and chemical weapons, the group systematically demonstrated the limits of any individual or home-based protection. More particularly, it ... suggested that the government's real aim was to prevent uncontrolled alarm ... the true purpose of ARP was thus the 'acquiescence of the people', not their protection."
On 6 March 1937, British science journal Nature published "The Civil Population and Air Attack" reviewing that book, and claiming that scientific facts are less important than a political consensus of opinion: "most scientific workers are agreed" that "there is no possible protection of the civilian population from air attack other than the abolition of bombing from the air." (The lie of the "Cambridge Scientists" is made clear in O'Brien: they tested a non-Government gas mask and found it didn't work. This was completely irrelevant. As Einstein said when 100 fascist scientists denounced him, facts are more important than politics in real science.)
Two factual books were then published which fought back against these lies by "leading experts". Labour MP Dr Leslie Haden-Guest in 1937 wrote the book If War Comes: A Guide to Air Raid Precautions and Anti-Gas Treatment, stating on page 5:
"Air war will be the war of heroic defence ... the nation will be victorious which is best organized in advance to bear the terrible effects of an air attack and yet maintain order and moral discipline in its life. And because the civilian population will be attacked by an air enemy, then defeat or victory for the nation will depend on the endurance and discipline of the civilian."
Finally, James Kendall (Professor of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh) in April 1938 published a scientific debunking of the Cambridge Scientists Anti-war propaganda and all the rest in his 179 pages long civil defence book, Breathe Freely! The Truth About Poison Gas (G. Bell & Sons, London):
“The unsuspecting layman naturally swallows it whole ... but they do want to get their manuscript accepted for the feature page of the Daily Drivel or the Weekly Wail. In order to do that, they must pile on the horrors thick.”
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Nicely even-handed attitude you have there, nc. I've not read many of the MHS papers, but I've read a few, and my overall impression of them is that you're being rather too dismissive of the extent to which civil defence of civilians against gas was much other than a gallant gesture, designed to reassure as much as defend. We now know (objectively!), for example, that the Germans had developed tabun and sarin which the kit issued in 1939 was useless against.
Against HE and (especially) incendiary attack, it's clear that ARP was effective in reducing casualties and damage.
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nc:
I'm looking forward to Grayzel's book, which appears to cover much of the same ground as (ahem) my own, but more as cultural history whereas mine is, I guess, closer to intellectual history. I hope, however, the lack of even-handedness Chris notes is your reading of the evidence, not hers. I've read most of the sources you cite above and it's more complicated than you make out.
To take just one point, you say:
The lie of the "Cambridge Scientists" is made clear in O'Brien: they tested a non-Government gas mask and found it didn't work. This was completely irrelevant. As Einstein said when 100 fascist scientists denounced him, facts are more important than politics in real science.
But they weren't lying; they quite clearly stated that their tests were based on a non-government mask as they were unable to get one of the government-issued civilian masks:
Unfortunately we have been unable to obtain one of this latter type [ARP civilian respirator], but we have carried out a number of tests on the former [privately manufactured mask]...
(Cambridge Scientists' Anti-War Group, The Protection of the Public from Aerial Attack: Being a Critical Examination of the Recommendations put Forward by the Air Raid Precautions Department of the Home Office (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), 49.) Nor was this unreasonable: the government mask was just a simple design too, not like the more effective (and more expensive, which was the point) military masks. Sure, facts are more important than politics in 'real science', and there's no doubt the Cambridge Scientists were ideologically motivated. That doesn't mean they were lying, as you claim. Facts are important in history too.
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