The Observer reports that Japan now claims to have captured Mandalay, 'second city and former capital of Burma (5). This seems not to have been confirmed by official British sources yet; however

It was stated in authoritative circles in London yesterday that with Lashio already in enemy hands, it would not be worth while suffering great losses to defend Mandalay.

That fits in well with more official statements: New Delhi has 'admitted that British troops are being withdrawn from positions north of the Irrawaddy'; 'Two spans of the famous Ava bridge, about eight miles below Mandalay, have been successfully blown up' (by retreating British forces, it is implied); and

The great Yennanchung oilfield in West Central Burma has been completely destroyed in accordance with the British 'scorched earth' tactics.

This was the most productive oilfield in the Empire after Trinidad; it will take 'vast quantities of new equipment and machinery handled by experts' to get it working again. A Scot named Mark Grieve, twenty-five years chief engineer at Yenangyaung oilfield (possibly the correct spelling of Yennanchung) helped the military destroy his life's work; he told Daniel Berrigan for the British United Press that it would take the Japanese 'at least a year to get any production at all, and they haven't got them'. Berrigan also interviewed some British -- actually mostly Irish, it seems -- soldiers and from them gained some idea of the fighting on the Irrawaddy front. Some 'Traitor Burmans', for example, were fighting on the side of the Japanese, and 'Many of the Irish bore wounds inflicted by the favourite Burmese weapon, the dah, a heavy curved sword'. In one strange incident, a patrol spotted 'Over 100 Japanese wearing Burmese costume [who] came out from one village holding a big white flag with the Japanese flag in the corner'. The Allied troops were outnumbered, even with tank support, and so 'had to retire'.

A military correspondent thinks that the Germans have delayed their offensive in the east as 'a bait to the Russians or to us to encourage us to do something rash which would give him a chance to strike back' (6). It could be that this strategy is working, as a report on another page says that (5):

Marshal Timoshenko's army, striking hard to forestall the threatened Nazi offensive against the Caucasus oil region, have driven a deep wedge into the German lines south of Kharkov.

This means that any German offensive from Kharkov southwards 'will now be threatened from the flank'. There has also been activity in Libya recently, despite the 'gasping, choking' effects of a Saharan sandstorm in which 'Military operations are blotted out, aircraft grounded, and all movements paralysed save along well-marked roads'. In the last week the Germans have extended their flank southwards to Tengender, 'to prevent flanking incursions, which they dislike above all else'. The British are also 'deepening and consolidating their position, with the result that for the first time desert warfare has assumed an aspect of fixed-position war'. But this can't last: as General Ritchie said recently, 'the Libyan war won't be won "by sitting on our backsides"'. As an example of not sitting on backsides, a report from South Africa, unconfirmed by London, says that 'a long-range British patrol in the Libyan desert has raided the headquarters of General Rommel but [...] Rommel was not there'.

The King and Queen paid a 'surprise visit' to Bath yesterday, and 'surveyed the damage done in the Nazi raids last week-end'.

Quickly the news of their presence spread and hundreds of citizens gathered to cheer them. At the first point where they left their car the King and Queen climbed over heaps of stone from wrecked houses to talk to a group of women who survived the raid.

"It is very encouraging of you to come here, Your Majesties," one grey-haired woman said.

"We were anxious to come and see how you are all getting on," the King told here."

The Queen's reactions are emphasised: '"It is terrible," [...] the Queen shook her head sadly at the devastation [...] "It is splendid to hear that you are carrying on like that," [...] "It makes us very proud of you." She also 'gave the Mayor of Bath three big parcels [which] contained blankets and other comforts for the bomb victims', and saw in action 'a Queen's messenger food unit', one of a number of convoys 'sent out by the Queen from Buckingham Palace'.

A military exercise was held in Westminster last night, 'the greatest invasion test London has ever staged'. 'Violent air raids, aimed at causing panic and confusion, were imagined as a prelude to the real attack' and 'Fifth Columnists prepared the way for invaders'.

More than 1,500 'paratroops' and 'airborne' troops landed in the Westminster area. Fully armed and equipped with a large number of tommy-guns, the invaders caught the defence somewhat by surprise. Street fighting ranged over a wide area, particularly near Victoria Station. Where the defenders were outnumbered they used delaying tactics and retired behind smoke screens.

The fifth columnists planted a bomb in a government building and, 'entering a postal exchange in the guise of workmen, endeavoured to blow it up', while

Invaders captured a barge near Chelsea and sent a platoon to storm the Houses of Parliament from the river.

It all seems to have gone off very well, though official results won't be known for a while.

This post is part of an experiment in post-blogging the Battle of Britain, the Blitz and the Baedeker Blitz. See here for an introduction to the series.

]]> http://airminded.org/2012/05/03/sunday-3-may-1942/feed/ 5 http://airminded.org/2010/12/16/the-limits-of-play/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-limits-of-play http://airminded.org/2010/12/16/the-limits-of-play/#comments Wed, 15 Dec 2010 13:01:51 +0000 Brett Holman http://airminded.org/?p=6026

[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.]

Earlier this year I was tutor for a subject which explored the idea of genre, using books, films and plays about war for this purpose. One of the texts we read was Primo Levi's account of his time in Auschwitz, If This Is A Man. One of the sections I found most interesting was Levi's lengthy account of the camp's internal, unofficial economy, which used 'prize-coupons' (sometimes given as a reward, exchangeable for Mahorca, a kind of tobacco) as currency, which could be used to buy things like shirts or extra rations of bread. Prisoners (or 'Häftlinge') would try to think up new ways to get coupons which could ultimately help them survive even a little longer. All the trading in prize-coupons going on meant that their value fluctuated 'in strict obedience to the laws of classical economics'.

For example:

Among the ordinary Häftlinge, there are not many who search for Mahorca to smoke it personally; for the most part it leaves the camp and ends in the hands of the civilian workers of the Buna. The traffic is an instance of a kind of 'kombinacja' [combination] frequently practised: the Häftling, somehow saving a ration of bread, invests it in Mahorca; he cautiously gets in touch with a civilian addict who acquires the Mahorca, paying in cash with a portion of bread greater than that initially invested. The Häftling eats the surplus, and puts back on the market the remaining ration. Speculations of this kind establish a tie between the internal economy of the Lager [camp] and the economic life of the outside world: the accidental failure of the distribution of tobacco among the civilian population of Cracow, overcoming the barrier of barbed wire which segregates us from human society, had an immediate repercussion in camp, provoking a notable rise in the quotation of Mahorca and consequently of the prize-coupon.

It occurred to me that one way to better understand how this economy dominated the lives of the Häftlinge and shaped their chances of survival would to participate in a simulation of it. Start out with the basic daily ration and the clothes on your back, and see what chances come your way in the course of (say) a week to work, save, beg, borrow or steal your way to a profitable kombinacja. Balance that profit against beatings received and rations foregone. If you end the week a little stronger than you began it or even the same, you win. But if you are weaker you lose, for you are closer to becoming one of the drowned, as Levi puts it: those too weak (whether in flesh or in spirit) to keep fighting for life.

I haven't created such a simulation. But when I suggested the idea to my students, the most common response was revulsion, that this would be an inappropriate thing to do. I was a bit surprised: as an economic system we should be able to simulate it like we would any other, regardless of its horrific context. But then these were first year Arts students, not third year Economics ones, and the idea of simulation may not have been familiar to them. On the other hand they are of a generation which has, knowingly or not, been using simulations all their lives: look at the highly successful The Sims series, for example. Why should they then baulk at simulating life in a concentration camp?

The reason perhaps has to do with two words I've been avoiding up until now: 'play' and 'game'. I did not, in fact, ask my students if we could learn anything by trying to 'simulate life in a concentration camp', I asked them if we could learn anything by playing it as a game. Games are fun; the Holocaust is not something you should enjoy on any level.

It's true that simulations and games are not quite the same thing. Instead they overlap. Simulations are very similar to ludic (structured, rule-bound) games, except they aren't necessarily fun. (Clearly they can be, even the extremely detailed ones: witness the popularity of flight simulators.) And of course games are not necessarily simulations, even the ludic ones (what does noughts and crosses simulate?) So it was probably unwise of me to use the word 'games'.

On the other hand, fun is in the pleasure centres of the beholder's brain. There are all sorts of simulations which I don't enjoy but which others do (the aforementioned flight simulators, for example). Highly abstract and detailed simulations of the Second World War aren't for everyone either, including flightsim fans, but I've enjoyed them in the past. So there's no absolute reason why Auschwitz: The Game could not exist. The question is rather, should it?

If it can teach people something (absolutely, never everything) of what the Häftlinge had to go through, then I would answer yes. Call it a simulation (or a serious game, perhaps), and experimenting instead of playing, if that helps suppress the queasiness. But I think the opportunities gained through 'playing' Auschwitz as a 'game' would be worth the risk of somebody, somewhere enjoying it.

I'll close with a couple of other ideas for serious-but-seriously-offensive games:

• Eichmann in Berlin. As Transportation Administrator for the Final Solution, it's your job to dispatch Jews to the camps via the railway system. You will have to navigate the Nazi polycratic bureaucracy in order to ensure you get enough rolling stock for your needs over the competing claims of the armed forces, industry and agriculture. Victory is determined by the proportion of European Jewry you manage to exterminate, combined with the amount of war production your camps contribute to the war effort, two goals which conflict with each other.
• You Are Bomber Harris! You control Bomber Command in the years of its greatest power, 1942-5. Your objective is simple: to destroy as many square miles of German urban area as possible. Nothing else matters. Your opponents are the Luftwaffe and your own commanders, who insist on ordering you to bomb less important oil and transportation targets. You choose the targets and the forces sent to attack them. At the end of the game, you gain points for every German working-class house destroyed; you lose them for every dead Bomber Command airman. A positive balance means victory.

Challenging in more ways than one.

Edited: per Chris Williams' suggestion.

[Cross-posted at Cliopatria.]

Watching this:

made me think of this:

and this:

and this:

and, because I happen to be marking my students' essays about it, this:

Sometimes it would be nice to be able to switch off and forget.

Compare and contrast. The Daily Mail in 2007:

During the dark days of the Second World War, British children passed the time with marbles, hopscotch, tiddlywinks and, for a lucky few, a Monopoly set.

But over in Germany, the amusements were far less innocent.

In one version of bagatelle named Bombers over England, children as young as four were encouraged to blow up settlements by firing a spring-driven ball on to a board featuring a map of Britain and the tip of Northern Europe.

Players were awarded a maximum 100 points for landing on London, while Liverpool was worth 40.

And the Daily Mail in 2010:

British children of the time were playing marbles and hidding [sic] in air raid shelters.

But for youngsters under the Third Reich, this board game was invented to teach them the tactics of warfare - against a British foe.

The war time amusement, Adlers Luftverteidigungs spiel, which translates as the Eagle Air Defence Game, involves two or more players attacking enemy positions on a geographically illustrated board while defending friendly territory.

The supposed contrast between pacifist British kids and militarist German kids is as silly now as it was then. Apparently the Daily Mail hasn't learned anything in the interim. (I checked to see if the same person was responsible for both, but the new article is credited to the improbably-named "DAILY MAIL REPORTER".) The only difference is in the quality of the comments: last time they took the writer to task for his foolishness, now they're almost spEak You're bRanes-worthy.

No doubt there were differences between British and German games of the period -- it's hard to imagine any British equivalent of the 1936 game Juden Raus, where the aim is to force the Jews in your town to emigrate to Palestine -- but simplistic dichotomies (as the Daily Mail seems to be fond of) are not going to help us understand what they were.

Joseph Miranda. First Battle of Britain. Decision Games, 2009. A wargame, not a book, included with Strategy & Tactics 255. The German air offensive against Britain in 1917 and 1918. The German player raids British cities and tries to damage civilian morale; the British player tries to intercept the raiders and bomb their aerodromes. It's a long, long time since I've bought a copy of S&T, and I try to avoid buying wargames because I never seem to actually play them, but I couldn't resist in this case, given the subject matter!

Robin Prior. Gallipoli: The End of the Myth. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009. As noted in comments! I doubt it will actually end the myth, as far as Australia is concerned, because it doesn't seemed to be aimed at the Gallipoli story as Australians understand it. Rather, it's aimed at other historians who have argued that the Dardanelles campaign was a good idea badly executed.

Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young, eds. Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth Century History. New York and London: The New Press, 2009. A collection of essays on subjects ranging from British air control in Iraq to the present-day legal questions surrounding the bombing of civilians. Most interesting to me is probably the one by Tetsuo Maeda on the bombing of Chungking (Chongqing) between 1938 and 1943, since it's hard to find much in English on strategic bombing by Japan. I think I actually did a double-take when I turned to the list of contributors and saw that three of them were people from my own university I'd never heard of! That they're philosophers and lawyers only partly excuses this ...

This week is the 25th anniversary of the Australian cinematic release of WarGames, which is mainly significant because I missed the anniversary of the US release a few weeks ago! There were a few retrospectives floating about then, which focused on the movie's importance as an early popularisation of the hacking and phreaking subcultures, and its influence on adolescent computer geeks (which is admittedly where most of the fun derives from). Instead, I want to look at the wargames in WarGames, and the ideas about nuclear strategy which it imparted to its young Gen X audience. Well, I have no hard figures about any influence it might have had, but I was probably just about a teenager when I first saw it, and it certainly helped form my ideas about nuclear warfare. (Though it also inspired me to try coding a Joshua simulator on the C64 ... I didn't get very far!) Warning: spoilers follow.

The wargames in question are played by WOPR (War Operations Plan Response), a computer located in the NORAD bunker, deep inside Cheyenne Mountain:

Well, the WOPR spends all its time thinking about World War III. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it plays an endless series of war games. using all available information on the state of the world. The WOPR has already fought World War III, as a game, time and time again. It estimates Soviet responses to our responses to their responses and so on. Estimates damage. Counts the dead. Then it looks for ways to improve its score ...

But early on in the movie, WOPR is made responsible not just for simulating World War III, but for running it. The rationale for this is that the men in the missile silos can't be relied upon to launch their missiles when ordered to, which would undermine US deterrence of a Soviet first strike. The trouble is that the geek hero, high school student and slacker David Lightman, has hacked into WOPR -- or rather Joshua, its alter ego -- and inadvertently caused it to start playing its primary wargame, Global Thermonuclear War, for real. The big screens at NORAD start showing phantom Soviet ICBM launches and bomber penetrations. The DEFCON level drops perilously close to all-out war. General Berenger, the NORAD commander, must decide whether he should recommend to the President that the US launch its missiles in response to what looks like an all-out nuclear assault on the US. The computer scientist who designed Joshua, Professor Falken, tries to convince him otherwise, in a key exchange which highlights the ultimate illogic of mutually assured destruction:

Falken: General, what you see on these screens up here is a fantasy. A computer-enhanced hallucination. Those blips are not real missiles. They're phantoms.
McKittrick: There's nothing to indicate a simulation. Everything's working perfectly.
F: Does it make any sense?
Berenger: Does what make any sense?
F: That! [points at the screens]
B: Look, I don't have time for a conversation right now.
F: General, are you prepared to destroy the enemy?
B: You betcha!
F: Do you think they know that?
B: I believe we've made that clear enough.
F: Then ... don't. Tell the president to ride out the attack. General, do you really believe that the enemy would attack without provocation, using so many missiles and subs, so that we would have no choice but to totally annihilate them? General, you are listening to a machine. Do the world a favour and don't act like one.

Which works. But then Joshua starts trying to crack the launch codes by brute force attack, in order to launch the missiles itself. As Falken had earlier remarked, he had never been able to teach Joshua the most important lesson of all: when to give up. Luckily, he and Lightman figure out how to use the futility of tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses) to do just that, just in time to stop Armageddon. In a spectacular sequence, Joshua then plays through all the real-world scenarios it had been programmed to play, finds that they all lead to both sides being wiped out, and concludes that global thermonuclear war is a 'Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.'

It's very simplistic, sure, but considering the age level WarGames was pitched at, it was a pretty good introduction to the concepts of deterrence, mutually assured destruction, escalation, and so on. A very timely one, too, in the era of the Reagan military buildup, a succession of ailing Soviet leaders, and potential flashpoints all around the world. And it's with respect to the geopolitical instability of the time that I end with the following list of all the scenarios played by Joshua in the last few scenes of the film (as far as I can make out anyway):

U.S. FIRST STRIKE
USSR FIRST STRIKE
Pre-emptive nuclear strikes by each superpower against the other's homeland.
NATO / WARSAW PACT
FAR EAST STRATEGY
Evidently scenarios which begin with friction in Europe and Asia respectively (possibly Korea, otherwise oddly missing from the list).
US USSR ESCALATION
Well, that seems a bit generic ...
USSR CHINA ATTACK
Plausible enough, the USSR and China having fallen out since the 1960s. China had a huge army, but was massively outgunned in nuclear weapons.
INDIA PAKISTAN WAR
Again, plausible enough. Rivals since 1947, fighting three wars in that time. Pakistan was an American ally, India theoretically non-aligned but buying a lot of Soviet military kit. Plus India had already joined the nuclear club.
MEDITERRANEAN WAR
A bit generic, and hard to see how a war would have started there. Maybe a clash between NATO allies Turkey and Greece?
HONGKONG VARIANT
Variant of what? Of course, Hong Kong was still in British hands at this time, so presumably there was an occupation or siege by China. But if that had happened, would anyone have gone to war over it?
SEATO DECAPITATING
Hmm. SEATO, an alliance of Western and Asian countries, was dissolved in 1977, six years before the film's release. Maybe WOPR's database needed updating. 'Decapitating' is an interesting word, perhaps suggesting attacks on SEATO capitals?
CUBAN PROVOCATION
And they are still provocative, though the end is perhaps in sight.
INADVERTENT [...]
ATLANTIC HEAVY
'Heavy' is suggestive, but of what exactly is unclear.
CUBAN PARAMILITARY
NICARAGUAN PREEMPTIVE
The Sandinistas had taken over Nicaragua in 1979. Maybe a preemptive US attack to stop them spreading socialism throughout central America?
PACIFIC T[E]RRITORIAL
BURMESE [THE]ATERWIDE
A military-socialist regime controlled Burma at this time, though I'm unsure of its geopolitical alignment.
TURKISH [DE]COY
NATO [...]T
ANGENTINA ESCALATION [sic]
This was just after the Falklands War. Though Angentina had nothing to do with that.
ICELAND MAXIMUM
Iceland, part of NATO, had a crucial position in the middle of the GIUK (Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom) gap, guarding the Atlantic sealanes from the Soviet navy.
ARABIAN THEATERWIDE
Oil. 'Nuff said.
U.S. SUBVERSION
The enemy within.
[AUS]TRALIAN MANEUVER
Hey, what did we do? Oh yeah: Pine Gap. Nurrangar. North-west Cape.
[...]AN DIVERSION
[...] LIMITED
SUDAN SURPRISE
Well, yes, starting a worldwide nuclear apocalypse over Sudan would be a surprise ...
NATO TERRITORIAL
Meaning what? Soviet incursions into NATO territory?
ZAIRE ALLIANCE
The state formerly known as Congo had been the site of a proxy war between the US and USSR, in the early 1960s.
ICELAND [IN]CIDENT
ENGLISH [ESC]ALATION
Presumably they mean the trigger-happy British.
ZAIRE [...]N
E[...]ITARY
MIDDLE EAST HEAVY
MEXICAN TAKEOVER
Maybe what happens if you don't preemptively strike Nicaragua?
CHAD ALERT
That's even less plausible than the Sudan.
SAUDI MANEUVER
AFRICAN [TERRI]TORIAL
ETHIOPIA[N ESC]ALATI[ON]
Not a happy country at this time.
CANADI[AN ...]
TURKISH HEAVY
NATO INCURSION
Maybe NATO is the aggressor here?
U.S. DEFENSE
Another blandly generic title.
CAMBODIAN HEAVY
PACT MEDIUM
As in Warsaw Pact.
ARCTIC MINIMAL
MEXIC[AN D]OMESTIC
TAIWAN THEATERWIDE
One of the classic flashpoints, even today.
PACIFIC MANEUVER
PORTUGAL REVOLUTION
It had had a revolution in 1974, and was now pretty democratic. Maybe a counter-revolution?
ALBANIAN DECOY
PALISTINIAN LOC[AL]
Perhaps an intifada draws in neighbouring Arab countries and then Soviet and American patrons?
M[ORO]CCAN MINIMA[L]
[...]RIAN DIVERS[ION]
CZECH OPTION
This is only 15 years after the Prague spring, of course.
FRENCH ALLIANCE
Intriguing. Perhaps France pulling out of NATO, and maybe allying with the Soviets?
ARABIAN CLANDESTINE
GABON REBELLION
NORTHERN MAX[IMU]M
[...]RIAN SU[RPRIS]E
[...]SH PARA[MILIT]ARY
SEATO TAKEOVER
HAWAIIAN ESCALATION
Pearl Harbor was (and is) still a key US naval base. But how would escalation have worked? The nearest Soviets were many thousands of kilometres away ...
IRANIAN MANEUVER
Actually, it's surprising that Iran doesn't feature more heavily in this list, given that the revolution and the hostage crisis were only a few years back.
NATO CONTAINMENT
SWISS [INC]IDENT
Hard to think of what sort of Swiss incident might have sparked a general war.
CUBA[N MIN]IMAL
CHAD [...]RT
ICELAND ESCALATION
VIETNAMESE RETALIATIO [sic]
Probably something involving China (which unsuccessfully attacked in 1979) rather than the US.
SYRIAN PROVOCATION
Towards Israel, presumably -- probably the Golan Heights.
LIBYAN LOCAL
Gaddafi, one of the classic foes of America in the Reagan years.
GABON TAKEOVER
Gabon again. Why? Am I missing something?
ROMANIAN WAR
Interesting. Romania was, or at least at times appeared to be, semi-detached from the Warsaw Pact in the Ceaucescu era. Maybe here it tries to break away completely and asks for NATO intervention. But I'm pretty sure they would have said 'no, are you crazy?'
MIDDLE EAST OFFENSIVE
DENMARK MASSIVE
Perhaps the Soviet Baltic Fleet attempts a breakout ...
CHILE CONFRONTATION
This was the Pinochet era. Chile had a number of territorial disputes on the books, so it could have been with any of its neighbours.
S.AFRICAN SUBVERSION
White South Africa's worst nightmare. Well, one of them, anyway. Not completely implausible given the wave of usually socialist inspired independence governments and revolutionary movements in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s.
USSR ALERT
NICARAGUAN THRUST
GREENLAND DOMESTIC
Greenland would barely have enough people to start a riot, surely? But I suppose it was important strategically.
ICELAND HEAVY
KENYA OPTION
PACIFIC DEFENSE
UGANDA MAXIMUM
THAI SUBVERSION
One of the few reliably pro-Western states in this part of the world.
ROMANIAN STRIKE
PAKISTAN SOVEREIGNTY
AFGHAN MISDIRECTION
That's the third time I've fallen for that this week ... Maybe a Soviet offensive against the Mujahadeen is actually a cover for a move against Pakistan or Iran?
THAI VARIATION
NORTHERN TERRITORIAL
POLISH PARAMILITARY
This was the Solidarity period -- Poland was under martial law when the film was being made.
S.AFRICAN OFFENSIVE
PANAMA MISDIRECTION
Panama of course had the canal, so it was strategically important.
SCANDINAVIAN DOMESTIC
JORDAN PREEMPTIVE
ENGLISH THRUST
BURMESE MANEUVER
SPAIN COUNTER
Spain had just joined NATO, but was a bit iffy on the matter, and furthermore prone to revolutions and civil wars ...
ARABIAN OFFENSIVE
CHAD INTERDICTION
TAIWAN MISDIRECTION
BANGLADESH THEATERWID [sic]
ETHIOPIAN LOCAL
ITALIAN TAKEOVER
By the Red Brigades?
VIETNAMESE INCIDENT
ENGLISH PREEMPTIVE
DENMARK ALTERNATE
THAI CONFRONTATION
TAIWAN SURPRISE
BRAZILIAN STRIKE
VENEZUELA SUDDEN
MAYLASIAN ALERT [sic]
ISREAL DISCRETIONARY [sic]
It's really not a good idea to let the work experience kids near your script ...
LIBYAN ACTION
PALISTINIAN TACTICAL [sic]
NATO ALTERNATE
CYPRESS MANEUVER [sic]
EGYPT MISDIRECTION
BANGLADESH THRUST
KENYA DEFENSE
BANGLADESH CONTAINMEN [sic]
VIETNAMESE STRIKE
ALBANIAN CONTAINMENT
GABON SURPRISE
Again?
IRAQ SOVEREIGNTY
There's a familiar name. It was deep into its war with Iran at the time. But maybe a Kurdish rebellion or something?
VIETNAMESE SUDDEN
LEBANON INTERDICTION
TAIWAN DOMESTIC
ALGERIAN SOVEREIGNTY
ARABIAN STRIKE
ATLANTIC SUDDEN
Perhaps a sudden thrust by the Red Banner fleet?
MONGOLIAN THRUST
One of my favourite Soviet satellite states. Presumably some sort of conflict with China (well, there was nobody else with a border with Mongolia ...)
POLISH DECOY
ALASKAN DISCRETIONARY
CANADIAN THRUST
ARABIAN LIGHT
S.AFRICAN DOMESTIC
PAKISTAN INCIDENT
MAYLASIAN MANEUVER [sic]
JAMAICA DECOY
Must have been some decoy ...
MAYLASIAN MINIMAL [sic]
RUSSIAN SOVEREIGNTY
Interesting. I suppose there were any number of separatist movements, as indeed there still are.
CHAD OPTION
BANGLADESH WAR
BURMESE CONTAINMENT
ASIAN THEATERWIDE
BULGARIAN CLANDESTINE
GREENLAND INCURSION
EGYPT SURGICAL
CZECH HEAVY
TAIWAN CONFRONTATION
GREENLAND MAXIMUM
UGANDA OFFENSIVE
CASPIAN DEFENSE
Defence against who? Iran?

OK, so some of those scenarios appear to have been generated at random, but there are still some clues as to what parts of the world a Hollywood screenwriter thought might ignite a nuclear war, c. 1983.

Via Old is the New New, MONIAC, the MOnetary National Income Automatic Computer: an analogue hydraulic computer designed by A. W. Phillips, a New Zealander, while a student at the LSE in 1949. The prototype was apparently built out of spare Lancaster parts. And there's one on display at the University of Melbourne, otherwise known as 'my uni', so obviously I had to go and have a look at it!

The MONIAC is currently on the 1st floor of the Economics and Commerce building (on the Parkville campus, off Professors Walk), just opposite the lifts, if anyone wants to visit (though it will probably move to the new building on Berkeley St when that's finished). It's a bit over 6 feet high. The bit of paper stuck to the door reads:

MONIAC stands for:
Monetary National Income Analogue Computer

The MONIAC is a hydraulic model of the economy which was used originally in the teaching of economies. Today, econometric modelling is undertaken in modern Research Computer Laboratories. Visit the Commerce Research Laboratory on this floor to compare the vastly changed environment for teaching and research.

The MONIAC was designed by A. W. Phillips, (an engineer turned economist of "Phillips Curve" fame) who constructed a working model of the Keynesian System utilising coloured water (representing incomes, expenditures, etc) flowing through pipes.

Only 3 or 4 models were built and this is the only known model in Australia. A working model is located in London. The cost of restoring this MONIAC to working has been quoted in the vicinity of $40,000+!

BY THE WAY:

The "Computer" had a reputation for leaking during demonstration!

Could this be the origin of terms used a great deal by Keynesian Economists namely, "Injections" and "Leakages"?

Expressions of interest in contributing to the restoration may be made to the Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Commerce.

However, Wikipedia says that there were 12 to 14 units made. MONIAC caused a sensation at the time (at least among economists!), and was lampooned in Punch. His creation probably helped put Phillips on the fast-track to a full professorship.

The working model in London would be one that's at the Science Museum; there's another at Cambridge, and the original prototype is being restored at Leeds.

The national income tank, with a blue pipe (on the left) feeding it in to the rest of the economy. Eventually, the tank gets replenished by greater or lesser amounts, depending on how much is diverted to other parts of the economy. One problem I can see is that it's a closed system -- there's no way for the economy to grow. Though apparently somebody did link a couple of MONIACs together to show how two economies would interact!

This is where the blue pipe leads to. You can see that part of income gets siphoned off as taxes, the rest going into (naturally enough) income after taxes. The taxes go to government expenditure, income after taxes to savings and (mostly) consumption. There's a diagram here, which explains it all better than I could.

Back when I was doing computational modelling in a very different domain (astrophysics), we'd sometimes refer to running a model as 'cranking the handle'. It would have been more fun with actual handles to crank, like this one! Though of course, these would be used to modify variables (e.g. how much is paid in taxes) and not to actually run the simulation.

Here's one of the outputs, showing national income over time: presumably the board would move from right to left and a pen would move up or down, recording the level of fluid in the income tank (shown in the second photo from the top). But probably more important than this graph was simply watching the fluid (money) pump around the computer (economy); apparently it gave a very vivid and intuitive understanding of the effects a change in one variable would have on another.

The on-off switches for the recorders and pumps, and the name of the manufacturer: Air Trainers Ltd, of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. Now this is interesting. As the name suggests, Air Trainers (later Air Trainers Link; later still, General Precision Systems; then in 1967 it was acquired by Redifon, another pioneer of aircraft simulators, and renamed Redifon Air Trainers) made flight simulators, which attempt to imitate the experience of piloting an aeroplane without the need to actually leave the ground. (Something like the Link Trainer, but more sophisticated.) In 1959, for example, they made a simulator for the new Vickers Vanguard, a turboprop airliner. They also made simulators for military aircraft too.

I've written before about something closely related to flight simulators, a bombing teacher and the idea of simulation. With Phillips' help, admittedly, in MONIAC, Air Trainers seems to have gotten past the idea of simulation by imitation and gone on to simulation by abstraction, if still in a physical way. MONIAC would have drawn on some of the company's strengths, not only in simulation but in hydraulics (an essential component of a flight simulator). And after MONIAC, Air Trainers/Air Trainers Link seems to have kept dabbling in the field of analogue computers. In 1958, they built MAC (simply, Mechanical Analogue Computer), which could solve 4th-order differential equations: Imperial College had one, which is probably the one now in the possession of the Science Museum. Probably related are two patents taken out by people working at Air Trainers Link in 1954 for 'Improvements in and relating to analogue computers'. They were evidently also looking towards the digital future -- there's a 1959 paper in The Computer Journal from another Air Trainers Link worker about a method for separation of variables, which includes notes 'on programming the problem for a digital computer'.

This all sounds a bit warfare state, doesn't it? (Though whether in a deep way or a shallow way, I'm not sure). Consider: (i) Air Link seems to have specialised in simulators for civil aviation, but they also made military ones too. And presumably their expertise was developed during the war, perhaps with Redifon; and anyway Britain's civil aviation industry was an offshoot of its military one. (ii) In Britain, analogue computers -- admittedly electromechanical, not hydromechanical! -- started out as aids in solving problems in atomic physics, but then were used for everything from code-breaking to dam-busting (Barnes Wallis supposedly used a Meccano computer for some of his calculations! Though this could just be a myth) (iii) Phillips built his prototype out of RAF surplus kit -- pumps and a Lancaster's windscreen wipers. Before the war, he studied electrical engineering in Britain and joined the RAF in 1940, which sent him to Singapore as a munitions officer. He spent the years 1942 to 1945 in a POW camp in Java, which was brutally used as a source of labour by the Japanese; those who knew him suggested that this experience led him to turn after the war from engineering to sociology and then economics. (iv) Before 1939, government expenditure in Britain was about 10% of GDP; this rose to a massive 54% in the war. So the idea of modelling a national economy must have been attractive to economists after 6 years of a semi-planned wartime economy. 'At the level of national planning was the consequence, not the cause, of high arms production. It was a means of accomodation to the needs of the warfare state.'

A good source on MONIAC is Chris Bissell, "The Moniac: a hydromechanical analog computer of the 1950s", IEEE Control Systems Magazine, February 2007, 69-74; on Phillips, see Robert Leeson, "A. W. H. Phillips M.B.E. (Military Division)", The Economic Journal 104 (1994), 605-18 (JSTOR). Phillips was a remarkable man. In between New Zealand and Britain, he swagged his way around Australia (working as a crocodile hunter for a while), China (just as the Japanese attacked in 1937) and the Soviet Union (took the Trans-Siberian to Europe). His MBE was awarded for his actions during the evacuation from Singapore, when his transport came under air attack. His citation reads, in part:

he obtained an unmounted machine gun, quickly improvised a successful mounting and operated the gun from the boat deck with outstanding courage for the whole period of the attack which lasted for 3½ hours. Even when the section deck from which he was operating was hit by a bomb, Flying Officer Phillips continued to set a most valuable example of coolness, steadiness and fearlessness to all in the vicinity

While in the POW camp at Bandung (where he met the legendary Australian doctor 'Weary' Dunlop), he built a secret radio which enabled the prisoners to keep track of news in the outside world, and, perhaps even more impressively, an immersion heater so that two thousand POWs could have a hot cuppa before bedtime. The Japanese guards could never figure out why the camp's lights dimmed every night at 10pm.

After a successful career in economics, Phillips switched careers yet again, becoming a Sinologist. He died in Auckland in 1975.

While in York Castle Museum, I was surprised to come across Black-Out, a 'skilful card game -- full of interest'. It's one of the British war games I mentioned in a previous post. At that time I only had a low-res photo from the BBC website to go on, so I was glad of the chance for a closer look.

So here's what I can make out of the gameplay. There are up to four players who driving a car or lorry across a blacked-out London. Each player starts in a corner of the map corresponding to the colour of their vehicle, and presumably wins by getting to the opposite corner. (The corners are Hyde Park Corner, Marble Arch, Holborn, Charing Cross.) The board is a map of London which bears some relation to the actual geography of the city (as Monopoly does not). But it's not marked into squares or numbers or anything, so it's a bit unclear how movement works.

One clue is the arrows drawn across the streets at intervals, each with a symbol beside it. These symbols seem to relate to various civil defence organisations or objects: Air Raid Precautions, Auxiliary Fire Service London, Metropolitan Police (?), fire hose, fire helmet, buckets of sand, fire extinguishers (?), a siren (?), a kerbside pillar of some sort (?), a red cross, a yellow cross, a blue and white ribbon (?). Presumably they are obstacles of some sort (and maybe opportunities too), and it's the successful navigation through these hazards which determines success or failure.

Another clue is that there seem to be three different directions a player can go in from each corner, so from Hyde Park Corner they could go down Park Lane, Piccadilly or Constitution Hill. It's a 'skilful game', so I think the player gets to choose which direction to go in, which way to turn at corners. Since it doesn't seem that the players could interact with each other (i.e. to slow each other down somehow), there's probably some random element too, or else there wouldn't be much replayability once the fastest routes have been figured out. It's also a 'card game', but unfortunately none of the cards are shown, so I can only guess at what they might do. One possibility is that they dictate movement (e.g. 'move to the nearest AFS post'). Another is they are random events (e.g. 'you fail to stop at a sentry point and the Home Guard shoots you dead').

That's about all I can say from the information to hand, except to add that it must date to between 1938 and 1941 (the years the AFS operated). It looks like it could be an amusing game for children, with more possibilities for skill than Snakes and Ladders type games, and with the added bonus of teaching a bit of London geography. But it's also a reflection of life in a city made strange and unfamiliar by the hazards of the blackout.

This post relates to my trip to Europe in July-September 2007.

]]> http://airminded.org/2008/01/07/black-out/feed/ 2 http://airminded.org/2007/09/06/the-raider/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-raider http://airminded.org/2007/09/06/the-raider/#comments Wed, 05 Sep 2007 18:21:24 +0000 Brett Holman http://airminded.org/2007/09/06/the-raider/

Yet another British war game to add to the pile, this one from 1922: The Raider.

A copy of a new game called "The Raider" has been received from Enstone and Lilienfeld, of 47, Berners Street, W.1. The game consists of a large sheet divided into squares, the whole showing a view of a battle-front seen from the air. The game is played with miniature attacking and defending aircraft, and is further complicated by machine gun and shrapnel barrage, contrary winds and failing engines. Moves are made by throwing dice, the object being for the attacking force -- 3 in number -- to reach and bomb a village and return intact.

The defending force is 9 in number, and these take off from two different aerodromes. The game, which was invented by an officer of the R.A.F., is so designed that experience in the gentle art of scrapping in the air is of considerable value to the players. The price is 5s. net.

Incidentally, Messrs Enstone and Lilienfeld, by whom the game is made and marketed, are ex-officers of the R.A.F., and they have besides a most amazing selection of "Brainwave" games and implements with which to pass the time amusingly.

This is rather interesting, especially given the timing: about 5 weeks after P. R. C. Groves popularised the knock-out blow in a series of articles The Times. I think you could just about knock together a boardgame in that time; on the other hand, Messrs Enstone and Lilienfeld might have working on it for some time and it may just be a coincidence. The object is to bomb (or defend) a village, which could be considered a civilian target, though given that the map is described as a 'battle-front' I'd say it's more likely that it's being attacked to support ground operations. The defenders out-number the attackers by three to one, which seems unusual in these sorts of games: normally the forces are quite symmetrical. It suggests a "bomber will always get through" mentality, but it could also just as easily be the result of the way the game is set up (for example, perhaps the defending player gets to choose where their aerodromes are, but does so before the attacker: they would then be at a severe disadvantage unless they had more units to play with). And the suggestion that the game is 'so designed that experience in the gentle art of scrapping in the air is of considerable value to the players' implies that the rules allow the possibility for aerial manoeuvring and are in some sense intended to be "realistic" rather than abstract (as do the rules about AA, wind and engine failure), though I wonder how that works given that movement is said to be based on die rolls.

Google seems not to know about The Raider so presumably it wasn't a big seller, despite the Aeroplane's best efforts.

I've been reading the Daily Mail quite a lot since I've been here, but only issues published in 1940 or earlier. So I'm grateful to Jakob for pointing me in the direction of an article in today's edition about German boardgames from the Second World War. It's fascinating, but why is it news? Ostensibly because a German collector is auctioning them in Britain, but really the point would seem to be to contrast the bloodthirsty German kids of 1940 with their far more innocent British counterparts:

During the dark days of the Second World War, British children passed the time with marbles, hopscotch, tiddlywinks and, for a lucky few, a Monopoly set.

But over in Germany, the amusements were far less innocent.

In one version of bagatelle named Bombers over England, children as young as four were encouraged to blow up settlements by firing a spring-driven ball on to a board featuring a map of Britain and the tip of Northern Europe.

Players were awarded a maximum 100 points for landing on London, while Liverpool was worth 40.

It's not just the Mail either. Says the Sun:

WARTIME Nazi board games rewarding German children for “blowing up” British targets have been unearthed.

The 1940s toys show that while UK kids played marbles and tiddlywinks, German youngsters were trying to score points by destroying London.

The Daily Mirror titles its story "Sick 'blast Brits' Nazi toys found" and adds that 'Board games based on snakes and ladders and battleships also get a disturbing Nazi twist'.

Well, Nazis are an easy target, aren't they -- even juvenile ones. But of course, as I've discussed here recently, British children played war games too, so it's really rather silly to pretend that they spent the whole war playing tiddlywinks, whereas the kinder on the other side of the North Sea were plotting the destruction of Britain. And to their credit, most of the commenters on the articles have seen through this too (one even mentioned L'Attaque!)

My only caveat here is that the British games I wrote about previously are rather more defensive in orientation -- showing Britain attacked, not attacking. But I did wonder if there might have been games of a more offensive nature. And it seems that there were! Two of the commenters on the (would you believe) Metro article list the names of a number of games made in the Second World War and mostly, it would seem, inspired by Bomber Command's raids on Germany:

• Raiders and Fighters
• Pinpoint the Bomber, designed by Francis Chichester
• Target for Tonight, a ''Snakes and Ladders' based game where the object is to be first to drop your bombs over Berlin'
• Ariel Combat [sic; presumably "Aerial Combat"]
• The Way to Berlin
• Bomber Command

The sources are even given: the first three are described in Peter Doyle and Paul Evans, The Home Front: British Wartime Memorabilia, 1939-1945 (Crowood Press, 2007); the latter three are in the British Museum though I didn't see them there! The only one of these I can find mention of online is the one by Chichester, which looks like it was designed to teach map-reading and navigational skills. It's actually a book and sounds a little bit Choose Your Own Adventure-ish to me! The flyleaf is said to read:

Pinpoint the Bomber describes a new form of game and a large map of the territory from Kent to the Rhineland is provided. The player is given the necessary clues to his position and must tax his skills and ingenuity to deduce from them exactly where he is, in other words to "pinpoint" the bomber on the map.

To players who have no direct interest in flying, the test of their ability has all the fascination of a detective story or crossword puzzle.

At the same time, they will be thrilled to read of the difficulties besetting an air-navigator on an operational raid into Germany, by following the progress of the raid on a map exactly to the same scale as the maps used by our navigators when raiding Germany, and by studying actual air photographs of enemy territory.

Players who hope one day to become air navigators can learn more about the art and principles of map-reading from two hours with the game than from two hundred hours air experience if untrained

And one of the entries in the book reads:

Item 16. Heavy flack ! The pilot takes avoiding action, but you forget to record his changes in course. After 3 minutes you do not know where you are. But, with a luck you certainly don't deserve you see through a very small gap in the clouds the junction of a large river and a canal-river. This junction is at the North end of a town, the canal-river runs south west through the middle of it...

(Apparently Aalst, near Brussels.)

This is absolutely fascinating and I'm going to have to have a look at this next time I'm in the BL!

But getting back to the German games, none of them appear to be proto-wargames in the sense I discussed previously: they are all too symmetric. As far as one can tell from the pictures (the Mail has a few, and the Sun has a slideshow as well) they are just adaptations of more traditional games, and so the mechanics have nothing to do with war as such. (Gotta love the Axis and Allies-style plastic ships and planes, though, in what I assume is Mit "Prien" gegen England.)

Perhaps most interesting is the one which doesn't fit into the "German kids wanted to destroy London!" theme. From the Mail again:

Incredibly a fourth, titled "V Game", plots an altogether different attack - on Hitler himself. Inspired by tiddlywinks, players flick coloured 'V-1 rockets' into a game board boasting targets of the Fuhrer and his cronies.

Mr Westwood-Brookes said: "It is a most unbelievable act of courage on the part of its makers. It is hardly the sort of thing you would want to be found with if the Gestapo came calling."

Indeed; you'd have to think it was practically suicidal. But that's assuming the interpretation given is correct. The last photo on the Mail page would appear to be the game in question (it's clearly wrongly captioned). The Nazi leaders as targets are Hitler, Goering, von Ribbentrop, Goebbels, Himmler, von Papen and von Rundstedt. The last two are a bit odd: von Papen surely was not particularly influential during the war (he was ambassador to Turkey, 1939-44); von Rundstedt was of course one of the highest-ranking army officers, not a Nazi leader as such. But there are cities as targets also: six letters spelling out B E R L I N, then Hamburg, Stuttgart, and so on (Danzig is there so presumably it was made after 1939). A subversive game about trying to knock off the Nazi leadership (using V1s!) is perhaps plausible -- but is it likely that in such a game you'd be trying to blow up German cities too? It doesn't seem so to me. Maybe V is for Victory and it's actually an Allied game -- but then the city names are German (München, not Munich). Maybe it's Allied propaganda? I can't really make sense of this game, so I'll just have to assume that whoever is selling it has a better idea than me.

Update: I see the BBC also has this story. It says the following about V Game (I think):

The games also include one possibly made in liberated Belgium in late 1944, where players throw crude darts at a board denoting German cities and representations of the Nazi regime. The bullseye is Adolf Hitler.

Well, that does sound like the game in the picture. So is V Game something else or has the story changed? A liberated country probably makes more sense than Germany as the origin for the game as described.

Unfortunately the Beeb, like the tabloids, can't resist quoting the auction house's historian about the huge gulf in national characteristics on display by these games:

They say a lot about the Nazis, and about the German regime. Our kids were still playing trains and Meccano and hopscotch and things like that.

But also things not like that.

Update 2: the BBC have more than made up for previously going along with the herd by publishing an excellent article on British war games of the period. So we have still more examples of the genre: Decorate Goering -- A Party Game, The Battle of the River Plate, The Allies Dart Game, Dash to Berlin, A.R.P., Night Raiders, Hang your Washing on the Siegfried Line, Chase the Enemy, Air-Scouts! The Great Air Flight Game, Black-Out, and something called Monopoly (but isn't). The last three are mentioned in the slide show; Black-Out in particular looks rather intriguing -- with its map of London from Holborn to Hyde Park Corner, it looks like it may be about the perils of trying to navigate the city in pitch-blackness.

Thanks again to Jakob for the tip!