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Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II
Len Deighton
Drawing on the author’s deep understanding of military history and weaponry, and of the strengths and frailties of politicians and generals, this is Len Deighton’s classic myth-puncturing analysis of the opening years of the Second World War.Reissued by William Collins, ‘Blood, Tears and Folly’ offers sweeping analysis of six theatres of war: the Battle of the Atlantic, Hitler’s conquest of western Europe, the war in the Mediterranean, the battle for the skies, Operation Barbarossa and the German assault on Russia, and the entry of Japan into what was from that point a truly global war.This is the period during which the Allied powers were brought to the brink of utter defeat, and Deighton offers an unflinching account of the political machinations, the strategy and tactics, the weapons and the men on both sides who created a world of terror and millions dead, of the Holocaust, and of nuclear devastation.As Deighton writes: ‘the time has come to sweep away the myths and reveal the no less inspiring gleam of that complex and frightening time in which evil was in the ascendant, goodness diffident, and the British – impetuous, foolish and brave beyond measure – the world’s only hope.’
Blood, Tears and Folly
An Objective Look at World War II
LEN DEIGHTON
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com)
First published by William Collins in 2014
First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape in 1993
Copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2014
Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Cover design: Antoni Deighton
Cover illustration: Gunther Prien’s U-47 (U-Boot Type VIIB built by Germaniaweft Krupp in 1938); cover photograph shows four WRNS with Webley revolvers practising at the pistol range © Imperial War Museum Archive
Source ISBN: 9780007531172
Ebook Edition © February 2014 ISBN: 9780007549498
Version: 2017-03-15
To your children, and ours
‘Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valour our only shield.’
Winston Churchill, addressing the House of Commons, 8 October 1940
CONTENTS
Title Page (#uae072a1e-f96a-5fa0-8097-18ddfe0aad54)
Copyright (#u99bad0b5-d30a-5ab9-8c53-93583a617220)
Dedication (#u68dc3d8c-cb12-5e81-bfbf-4746d653aa43)
Epigraph (#uba3bcd60-84c5-5817-a87b-ad433122ca0a)
Cover Designer’s Note
Illustrations
Introduction
PART ONE: The Battle of the Atlantic
1 Britannia Rules The Waves
2 Days of Wine and Roses
3 Exchanges of Secrets
4 Science Goes to Sea
5 War on the Cathode Tube
PART TWO: Hitler Conquers Europe
6 Germany: Unrecognized Power
7 Passchendaele and After
8 France in the Prewar Years
9 An Anti-Hitler Coalition?
10 German Arms Outstretched
11 Retreat
PART THREE: The Mediterranean War
12 The War Moves South
13 A Tactician’s Paradise
14 Double Defeat: Greece and Cyrenaica
15 Two Side-Shows
16 Quartermaster’s Nightmare
PART FOUR: The War in the Air
17 The Wars Before the War
18 Preparations
19 The Bullets Are Flying
20 Hours of Darkness
21 The Beginning of the End
PART FIVE: Barbarossa: The Attack on Russia
22 Fighting in Peacetime
23 The Longest Day of the Year
24 ‘A War of Annihilation’
25 The Last Chance
26 The War for Oil
PART SIX: Japan Goes to War
27 Bushido: The Soldier’s Code
28 The Way to War
29 Imperial Forces
30 Attack on Pearl Harbor
31 The Co-Prosperity Sphere
Conclusion: ‘Went The Day Well?’
Plate Section
Notes and References
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also By Len Deighton
About the Publisher
Cover Designer’s Note (#uc78e7ccf-857c-5c05-8b3e-195074386b15)
The story of the Second World War is one of tremendous technological change combined with great human emotion. When I set out to design the covers for this reissue of Len Deighton’s trilogy of Second World War histories, Fighter, Blitzkrieg and Blood, Tears and Folly, I wanted to incorporate both of these elements into a unified design theme that could be used on all three books. The books were among the first to offer a balanced narrative of the war with both sides of the story being represented, and I felt it was essential that the cover designs were similarly complete.
To convey the concept of technological change and development I created illustrations that begin as a set of plans on the back cover and continue across the spine to become a full-colour image of a fighting machine on the front. Many things we take for granted today, such as the mobile phone, microwave and air-traffic control, owe their development to the innovation that took place during the war.
The Second World War affected the lives of every man, woman and child living in Western Europe between 1939 and 1945. Television news has made us accustomed to watching remotely piloted drones waging war from the safety of our living room sofas, uninvolved except for the opinions we choose to express. In contrast I felt it was important to remind readers of the direct participation and sacrifice made by everyone during the war, so I carefully chose photographs of women in a variety of roles.
One such woman was my grandmother, an audacious and inspirational person who left her job as a chef to become a skilled oxyacetylene welder making flame traps for night-fighters. Thousands of women like her, building airplanes, tanks and ships, were immortalized in America by the ‘Rosie the Riveter’ campaign. Britain’s survival during the leanest days of the war owes a debt of gratitude to the Women’s Land Army. These hard-working women succeeded in cultivating every available square foot of land and saved the country from starvation when the U-boat campaign was at its most successful.
The extraordinary women of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry created a secret unit that was dropped by parachute behind enemy lines to undertake espionage work for the Special Operations Executive. Bletchley Park’s work in cracking the ‘Enigma’ codes is well known, and many of the brilliant code-breakers were women. The magnificent women ferry-pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary flew everything from fast and nimble Spitfire fighters to large and powerful Lancaster heavy bombers, many with battle damage and in need of repair. The Royal Air Force and Royal Navy depended on an army of women radar controllers to manage their operations in the air and at sea.
The contribution to the war made by women was not limited to Britain. In America Jacqueline Cochrane’s famous Women’s Airforce Service Pilots ferried military aircraft, while flight nurses – the unsung heroines of the US Army – provided critical medical attention to wounded soldiers, saving lives on both the European and Pacific fighting fronts. In Russia, too, all the Red Army’s nurses were women. Those serving as front-line medics were also armed and expected to fight alongside their male comrades when not attending to the wounded. Their casualty rate was approximately equal to that of the Red Army infantry. These women demonstrated that they were every bit as willing to help win a war against an enemy that threatened the life they knew. Together they blazed a trail for equality and their lasting contribution to today’s society deserves to be recognized.
Blood, Tears and Folly is a history of the Second World War concentrating on the early years when Britain and her dominions came near to defeat. The German navy’s use of advanced diesel-electric submarines and the four-rotor Enigma machine almost succeeded in starving Britain of raw materials and food. The Type VII is the iconic U-boat of the Battle of the Atlantic. During the early part of the war they were painted in a resplendent three-colour scheme, including a bright red hull below the waterline (they were later painted solid grey to make them less visible). Built by Krupp Germaniawerft in Kiel and launched in 1938, U-47, a Type VIIB commanded by Günther Prien that sank thirty ships including the battleship HMS Royal Oak, begins as a line-drawn plan on the back cover before appearing menacingly in full colour on the front. The front-cover photograph of a group of Wrens qualifying at the pistol range exemplifies Britain’s plucky resolve in the face of extreme adversity. This defiant attitude played an important role in convincing a sceptical United States to support Britain in its war against Germany.
Antoni Deighton, 2013
Illustrations (#uc78e7ccf-857c-5c05-8b3e-195074386b15)
PLATES
1 Before Munich – Winston Churchill talks earnestly in Whitehall to Lord Halifax, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, after returning from the Continent in March 1938
2 General Wilhelm Keitel, Hitler’s Army Chief of Staff, in conversation with the Führer on a flight to Munich in March 1938
3 Hitler receives Prime Minister Chamberlain at Obersalzberg in September 1938 – the prime move in ‘appeasement’
4 Admirals Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz planning the German U-boat campaign in the North Atlantic, October 1939
5 Six days after becoming prime minister, Churchill flew to France for talks on the imminent collapse with General Gamelin and General Lord Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, May 1940
6 General Erwin Rommel, after sweeping through France in May 1940, became the notorious ‘Desert Fox’ of North Africa
7 Hitler meets the fascist Spanish dictator General Franco, October 1940
8 General Thomas Blamey, commander of Australian forces in the Middle East, talks to troops just returned from Crete to Palestine
9 General ‘Dick’ O’Connor with the Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the Middle East, General Sir Archibald Wavell, outside Bardia, Libya, January 1941
10 General Sir John Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, with the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in Cairo, March 1941
11 Prime Minister Churchill inspecting part of Britain’s defences in 1940 with a Tommy gun under his arm
12 Hitler discussing progress of the war with the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, August 1941
