Dirty Little Secrets of World War II: Military Information No One Told You... [Paperback]

James F. Dunnigan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 14, 1996

Dirty Little Secrets of World War II exposes the dark, irreverent, misunderstood, and often tragicomic aspects of military operations during World War II, many of them virtually unknown even to military buffs. Like its successful predecessor, Dirty Little Secrets, Dunnigan and Nofi's new book vividly brings to life all theaters and participants of the war. Revelations include:

- The real death count for the war, and why it has never been previously released.

- The "new age" general who refused to smoke or drink, who lived on a vitamin-enriched diet, who opposed animal experimentation, and who regularly consulted his astrologer.

- How equipment developed for the war led to such modern high-tech innovations as "smart bombs," electronic warfare, and nuclear missles.

- The lackadaisical relationship between Germany and Japan throughout the war.

- Tricky bits of information about the lingering effects of the war -- like the thousands of live shells and mines that are still buried in Europe and off the East Coast of America.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There aren't many "dirty secrets" in this addictively readable book. Really, it's a compendium of fun facts about horrors arranged in bite-size prose bits and written under the influence of lead author Dunnigan's favorite book, Will Cuppy's irreverent historical classic The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody. The minichapters have titles like "Killer Vegetables and the Farts from Hell" (at 20,000 feet, gas caused by eating cabbages expanded, killing airmen). Did you know that every single German spy who infiltrated England became an Allied double agent? That MacArthur, Churchill, and Roosevelt all descended from one Sarah Belcher of Taunton, Massachusetts? That World War II killed about 100 million, or five percent of humanity? That a Russian was 100 times likelier to die than an American? (A USSR boy born in 1923 had an eighty-percent chance of dying by 1945.) We learn the origin of the term "rock & roll" (all weapons firing on automatic), the superiority or stupidity of tracer bullets, Göring's air-war policy, and U.S. troop-replacement policy. Some will argue with this book's rather simple answers to complex questions--was Chamberlain smart to cave to Hitler in the Munich pact because it bought a year to build planes and invent radar, which won the Battle of Britain? Other books come to different conclusions, but few so ably honor the master of snappy history, Will Cuppy. --Tim Appelo

From Publishers Weekly

This book is only partly about "dirty little secrets"; it is mostly a collection of unfamiliar information about the war, presented in some 300 briefs. Typical of the entries in these entertaining pages is a succinct account of the German "counterfeit offensive," in which an attempt was made to flood Britain with fake pound notes; and a comparison between American and German armies at squad, battalion and division level. In the intriguing trivia section, one learns that Gen. Douglas MacArthur was related to President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and that participants in the battle for Guadalcanal included a 12-year-old American sailor. As to the dirty little secrets, here are a few examples: Australian stevedores deliberately obstructed the U.S. war effort at times; disease was responsible for nearly half the war deaths; Allied bombers caused far less damage to the enemy than is generally supposed. Dunnigan is the author of The Complete Wargames Handbook; Nofi wrote Napoleon at War. Illustrations.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (March 14, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688122884
• ISBN-13: 978-0688122881
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #599,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining collection of odd WWII facts, March 26, 2003

By 

Bobby Dillard (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dirty Little Secrets of World War II: Military Information No One Told You... (Paperback)

The US army actually had more ships than the US navy? Polish cavalry never actually fought German tanks? These and other tidbits of historical trivia are compiled in this book. Ranging from odd facts such as the number of inkstamps used by Nazi Germany to the debunking of popular myth like the supposed failure of the Maginot Line, this tome is a good addition for the library of any WWII buff.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lots of Research Poorly Written, December 10, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Dirty Little Secrets of World War II: Military Information No One Told You... (Paperback)

I really enjoyed the book and I think a great deal of time went into its research; however, I think it was a bit substandard in form. Much to much attention is spent on conveying meaningless statistics. Moreover, there are a number of grammatical errors, especially dangling prepositions.

The factor that removed it from the four star range for me, was the inherent conflict with the following:
On page 330 the authors write: "While it is widely known that the submarine was crucial in destroying Japan's merchant marine during the Pacific war, it [is] often overlooked that U.S. subs sank only 45 percent of enemy merchant shipping. Aircraft accounted for most of the rest."

However, on page 338 our authors state: "The decisive weapon in the war against Japan was the submarine." The Authors then present a table showing that submarines accounted for 55% of Japanese merchant shipping loss while aircraft only account for 33%.

These assertions of fact cannot coexist. Which is true?! I shall always wonder.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Still a good read nevertheless, July 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Dirty Little Secrets of World War II: Military Information No One Told You... (Paperback)

I'm not sure if I rank as a casual reader of military history- in the last two years, I've read in detail about a dozen books on the last World War, and about that number casually as well-but I picked up Dirty Little Secrets. It's been a welcome addition to my small library of books on this period since then.

It is easy for military historians to discount some of the "revelations" in it as either not new, or just plain factually wrong. It is true indeed that the authors of the book are somewhat biased in their writing- a fact that they're not ashamed to admit, as one would be able to read in the first few pages- and may be difficult for casual readers to accurately discern whether some fact is indeed the whole truth, or just a plain misrepresentation. Even then, the book is still highly enjoyable to read, as the authors have a lively writing style that's not intimating. Without make a final judgement to the how accurate to fact are the authors' stance on some issue, I still found their opinions a refreshing read, for example on Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" policy.

Finally, it's equally easy for new readers to the genre to get into, and best of all, the organisation of information in it is well suited to a person casually reading selected pages of the book, as opposed to having to read it from front to back in order to make any sense out of it. The book may thus not be suited for expert readers of this period; but for the casual reader, it may well be worth a look.