Another War Crime

It is sad when a book disappoints so thoroughly in the first twenty pages or so that you can't bear to read the rest of it. I recently purchased a book called Mussolini's War which claims to be a history of the Italian armed forces in the Second World War and to "set the record straight" about their supposed poor showing in that conflict. Being a bit of a sucker for the Italians in that particular conflict (rather like my affection for the Austro-Hungarians in the previous war) I purchased the book. I fully expected a certain amount of revisionism but I also hoped to learn a little more about the actions of Italy's military. Most histories settle for saying something like "and the Italians surrendered en masse" which while usually true is not entirely fair. For all their overall failure there were plenty of acts of courage and (occasionally) skill both at the individual and unit level that the Italians can point to with pride. I rather hoped this book might bring some of that out. In the first twenty pages or so I found five deliberate misrepresentations and at least two outright lies. There may indeed be good stuff in there somewhere but I'm afraid I have no interest in looking for it.

This leaves me with the other book I bought recently which I hope will be better. Unfortunately it's in German so I have to buy myself a decent German-English dictionary. The title of the book is Radetzky: Eine Biographie which even I can handle but apart from that its going to be rather slow work. The only other phrase I know which might be of use is "in deinem lager ist Österrreich".

Lest anybody think that amateur translation is going to become a hobby of mine I was really driven to it by the fact that there don't seem to be any satisfactory (or for that matter unsatisfactory) biographies of Radetzky in English. Type "Radetzky" into amazon's search engine and all you get is several pages of various publications of the Radetzky March which I already have plus the German language biography I have just bought. Hopefully I will prove a little better at learning German now than I was at school. In fact, hopefully I am a little better at pretty much everything now than I was at school.

I already have a biography of Archduke Karl of Habsburg. Now that I have my biography of Radetzky I only need Wallenstein and Prince Eugene of Savoy to make my collection of Habsburg military luminaries complete. Mind you if anybody wanted to provide a collection of military idiots in Habsburg service the list would go on for pages. Four outstanding military leaders in an empire that lasted approximately four centuries seems a little skimpy although the Habsburgs did have a number of commanders that at least make it into the second rank.

Of course the Habsburgs were unlucky in their enemies. Most generals who run up against either Frederick the Great or Napoleon are going to come off looking rather silly by comparison. Still one gets the impression that military genius was not really a qualification for high command with the Habsburgs. Even Radetzky who rose to the highest rank was a little surprised. Summoned to the emperor's presence to be given the position of chief of staff Radetzky protested his own lack of experience and education for the role. The emperor's response was "you are too sensible to make outrageous mistakes and if you make ordinary mistakes, well I'm quite used to that from my generals". The emperor who said that, by the way, was Franz I who would have gone down as the empire's most mediocre ruler if he hadn't been succeeded by his halfwit son Ferdinand.

In the course of a long career Radetzky served first Franz, then Ferdinand and finally Franz Josef who raised standards of imperial governance back up to the levels of Franz after the rather disastrous attempt to run the empire as a special needs school.

I seem to have wandered about a bit in this blog entry which makes me doubt if I have the attention span necessary to translate an entire book. Those who know me are probably surprised that I possessed the attention span to purchase it in the first place. I'm also still looking for a book that can give me a decent account of Italy's armed forces in the Second World War. Suggestions welcome.