NEW BOOK - LUFTWAFFE & THE WAR AT SEA

[DavidIsby]

What bothered Kitchens was the lack of specific sourcing for the documents. I made a point of including it in this book and here above. I noticed it had never bothered people using Garland Press editions. So, in response to his point, not only did I include it in this book, I put in on the Amazon.com treatments of the earlier books. Neither the publisher nor I thought we were being remiss.

My goal was never to do synthesis. I was not paid for #$%ing synthesis! Nor was it my objective. People want to hear from those who were involved at the time as well as those who have the benefit of 60 years work. It was to select and present a group of documents in their historical context, raise warning flags where approrpriate, and provide an annotated bibliography and description of the authors.

You get all of this for less than a xerox copy of the original documents, plus pretty pictures and maps.

[SES]

Hi all,

I bought "Fighting the Bombers" with great expectations. And how should I put it - it was a surprise. It is a collection of interrogation reports of Luftwaffe personnel ranging from supreme commanders to nightfighter pilots.

It is thus an account of their recollections from their point of vantage. And some of them did in the nature of things not have the full picture. The Need-to-Know principle applied also in the Wehrmacht. So albeit the interrogated personnel might have been cooperative, there are countless mistakes in their accounts, far too lengthy to quote here. But it is very interesting to see how little some generals knew or understood about their own organization, that assuming that they gave correct and honest answers.

The interrogations seem to have been conducted in German by interrogators, who did not have a good understanding of many of the subjects they asked questions about. Bluntly put: They asked stupid questions and got silly answers.

Subsequently the reports were translated to English by translators, who did not have a good grasp of operational notions or German military terminology.

If you have a good understanding of the subject and can transliterate to German as you read, there is much valuable information in the book, but also there are serious, incorrect accounts.

These interrogation reports CANNOT be used as prime sources, but sadly they have been by authors, who jumped the gun and in good faith believed these reports.

Kind regards

SES

www.gyges.dk

[Tony Williams]

Originally Posted by SES

These interrogation reports CANNOT be used as prime sources, but sadly they have been by authors, who jumped the gun and in good faith believed these reports.

You make an interesting point here, which I have also noticed in compiling information for my own books. It is traditional to regard 'primary sources' - first-hand accounts from people involved at the time - as the best and most valuable evidence. However, I have frequently discovered this to be untrue. As you say, witnesses might not have known the 'whole picture', or have misunderstood it. Even direct eye-witness evidence sometimes turns out to be wrong, particularly in wartime when information is more restricted and difficult to check.

Such first-hand accounts are fascinating (because they reveal what the people involved thought was the case, even if it wasn't) but always need cross-checking with other sources.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

[SES]

Hi Tony,

Thank you for your responce and I wholeheartedly agree, facinating accounts, valuable as background, and the lack of knowledge is interesting in itself. With the above caveats I find the books are good value for money.
bregds
SES

[Rabe Anton]

SES and Tony Williams have, perhaps unwittingly, put their finger on yet another major deficit in David Isby's Luftwaffe-related publications. Isby is quite right that certain primary documents have value in the market-place and that some consumers are interested in such materials. What he seems to think, however, is that primary documents speak for themselves. They do not. A worthwhile documents compilation, or "book of readings" as academics call them, is a miserable failure without commentary that puts the documents and their authors in their historical setting. This means at least several biographical paragraphs on the author(s), explicating his/their views, life experiences, careers, concerns, purposes in writing, and so forth. Even their religious upbringing and psychological state could conceivably bear on their outlook and thus their writing, official and military though it be. It also means that each document should be accompanied by an extended, carefully researched statement of its origins, why it was produced, what its objectives were, what its strengths and shortcomings are, possible prejudices and blinders, and so forth. In other words, each document must be set against the historical tapestry that produced it.

Extended annotations about document authors and about individual items in a published collection should be presented just before the writing on which they bear, not off at the front or rear of the book as they are in Fighting the Bombers. Annotations—individual footnotes explaining terms or pointing out special points—rightly belong after each document.

The hard, nasty, gritty truth is this: document compilations are among the most difficult and sophisticated of historical writings. Successful compilations require at least as much research and loving care as do synthetic monographs. If Isby had obtained a graduate (preferably doctoral) level education in history and, better yet, if he had lived and worked for extended periods in the academic milieu of the discipline, he would have immediately grasped the characteristics required to produce a meaningful assembly of primary materials. The documents, Mr. Isby, do NOT speak for themselves . . . and, as SES and Tony Williams have perceived, the reader both needs and deserves to be fully informed about the complexion and content of each writing included in his manuscript.

RA

[Ruy Horta]

Yet, this book can provide an easy means to get these original documents, with or without annotations.

Plenty of monographs which would at least deserve a similar treatment, which is better than remaining obscure or within the domain of those willing and able to visit archives etc.

Although I understand some of the criticism, I certainly believe there is room on my bookshelf for this kind of work.

[DavidIsby]

Mr. Anton is certainly entitled to his opinions. Indeed, I share most of them. What he is not entitled to is his own facts.



The fact in question is: does the work in question meet the general industry standards for books of republished material?



Let’s look at the bookshelf in this subject matter area. I can see the US Air Force has published historical material without editorial commentary or apparatus bringing it up to date. Examples of this are the multi-volume Craven & Cate official history (the recent edition has a two-page introduction added to each volume) and the wartime AAF in Action Monographs. The Navy and the Army also publish post-war material without editorial commentary. These include the Department of the Army publications on German combat actions on the Eastern Front. The Garland Press editions of the Karlshrue studies and German postwar Army studies have no editorial commentary at all nor anyone’s name to hold responsible for the selection made. Looking at a couple of books, THE FIRST AND THE LAST by Adolf Galland and WINGED WARFARE by Billy Bishop, I see no one has provided the new editions with any apparatus or even raised a warning flag that the author was not actually under oath as to the truth of what they were saying. In fact, most publications of such material has no editorial additions, synthesis or value-added of any sort. So the works in question exceed industry standards.



Now, I believe annotating documents can be an excellent and most useful approach to history. Since Mr. Anton reads THE JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY I can direct his attention to the review I did a couple of years back on Les Grau’s annotated Russian General Staff study on Afghanistan, which was excellent. But it’s not the only way. If we had to follow Mr. Anton’s alleged standards, all the books should not have appeared. In reality, there will be multiple approaches to doing this. Just like there are books by Boog, Corum, Muller etc. as well as Ospreys.



Mr. Anton should certainly edit a collection of Luftwaffe accounts that, in his opinion, would meet his (and that’s what they are, HIS, not that expected of such works) requirements. If what results is reasonably priced, I will most likely buy a copy (as will, I suspect, most of the readers of this board. If you can do it better, please do so. My publisher would probably give you a contract. Mr. Anton is not entitled to say that material should remain out of print or only in microfilm in archives and thus unavailable to most of the readers of this board until it is tucked between hard covers to his satisfaction in company with what he sees as sufficient synthesis. If this inspires Mr. Anton to go and do as good a job of annotating and editing Luftwaffe material as Les Grau did on Afghanistan material, I am sure he will be as grateful to me as I was to Dr. Kitchen for calling my attention that including sourcing details would be a good idea.