Customer Reviews

Flawed Victory: Jutland, 1916

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Publishers' Blurb claims that the author writes with "style and verve", and gives an "expert analysis" of the battle. Well, yes, undeniably he does write with "style and verve", but his "expert analysis" is unfortunately not quite expert enough in places, and his background essay has sufficient factual errors that you wonder how reliable his account of the battle actually is.

He refers to the coronation of Kaiser Wilhelm I as "emperor of the first German Reich" (p.10). If that is the case, and Hitler's was the Third Reich, where does the author think the second fits in...? Wilhelm's Reich was of course the Second, the first having been dissolved as a result of Napoleon's conquest of Germany.

He seems to have his world wars confused on page 48: "War with Germany now seemed inevitable, because Britain knew that a German attack on France would almost certainly go through the Low Countries as it had in 1870, to repeat the successful Schlieffen Plan".

This is pure nonsense. In 1870 the Germans did NOT attack through the Low Countries, they came through Alsace-Lorraine, where the French were waiting for them in 1914. I don't know which "successful Shlieffen Plan" was being repeated in 1914, as that was it's first outing in anger. This is not the place to discuss Schlieffen's plan, but no-one really thought it would be successful; even Schlieffen's successors modified it severely. If Britain was expecting the German attack on France to go through the Low Counties, would it have sent two Army Corps to face two German Armies at Mons? They were expecting something to go through Belgium, of course, as the French had "borrowed" a copy of the Schlieffen Plan several years before, but no-one expected the Germans to do anything so rash...

Now, you might argue that these opening chapters are just setting the scene for the author's study of the battle, but, if he cannot be bothered to check his facts on something so basic as this, how can anyone be expected to trust his judgement on the more complex issues involved in the battle?

As to his "expert analysis", he twice refers to crew members, "all of them from the foretop" of their ships, a hundred feet or more above the sea, "who had been flung clear by the blast" (p.163) surviving the catastrophic destruction of their ships. These crewmen, if they had been flung from a foretop by the explosion of their ship, would hardly have survived the experience. The author immediately prints the account of one of the survivors (p.163):

"I just waited for the water to come up and meet me, then I stepped out and began swimming."

"Expert analysis", hey? Or does "flung clear by the blast" mean something else on the other side of the Atlantic?

Do publishers read their books before issuing them? Do they no longer employ editors? I paid good money for this book, and I think I've been robbed.

On the vaguer issues, despite mentioning V.E. Tarrant's Jutland - the German Perspective in his Preface, a book looking at the German accounts of the battle, with extensive translations into English, our author then appears to ignore this evidence and base his accounts purely on the English-language authorities and ignore the German viewpoint entirely. This is definitely an Anglophile account of the battle.

For anyone wanting a balanced view, I would recommend Mr. Tarrant's book; you will understand why the Germans were doing what they did much better than you will here. I would also recommend the following, as they obviously proved very useful to this author; I certainly recognised their influence in his narrative:

Robert Massie's Dreadnought, a magnificent, well-researched and eminently readable work on the story of Anglo-German naval rivalry;

Andrew Gordon's The Rules of the Game - Jutland and British Naval Command, a detailed, scholarly, and highly-readable study of the Royal Navy and how it came to behave as it did at Jutland.

Despite being heavily influenced by The Rules of the Game - starting this book with Admiral Tryon's mishap with HMS Victoria and HMS Camperdown (an event also used in the film Kind Hearts and Coronets), and bringing the ghost of the admiral back at the conclusion of the book, when he looks at the dead hand of British naval tradition and it's malign influence on tactics at Jutland, our author has overlooked Gordon's discovery that the British battlecruisers made up for their poor gun-sighting by increasing their rate of fire - by wedging open the blast-doors that were supposed to protect their magazines from flash-backs from turret explosions, to allow faster passage to the ammunition and charges.

There were a couple of other points of interpretation I could argue over, but I can't be bothered to go back and look them up.

There in no doubt that the Battle of Jutland was indecisive - and with ships lost to both sides, it was inevitable that both Britain and Germany would claim victory.

This is a book in which a knowledgeable author provides an easy-to-understand dialogue with informed and balanced opinions. In so doing, the book adds something very refreshing to an old and well-aired debate. The book is hardback and contains some 300 pages of text and 23 well chosen historic photographs. One of these shows the 17,250 ton Battle cruiser "Invincible" having broken in two with both halves sticking out of the water - the other ends resting on the seabed below.

For any diver contemplating an expedition to these historic wrecks, this book will provide all the background information to both the Battle itself and the intrigue which continues to this day. Please bear in mind that every ship is a War Grave.

NM

The previous reviewer from London is correct, there are some mistakes made by the author of this book. However I think that taken in the overall context of what the author was trying to present to the reader they do not diminish from the end result. In the introduction the author states:

"As the bibliography will show, the book is based almost entirely on secondary sources, and I make no apology for this. It was never intended to be a piece of original scholarly research. There are surely no relevant facts or important details that have not been revealed after all this time in the many accounts and analyses written on the subject of Jutland. I believe I have not omitted or distorted any significant facts concerning the battle, or the North Sea actions preceding it."

In relation to the other comment made about the "expert analysis" in regards to crew members flung clear from the blast the actual sentence reads:

"The Invincible survivors bravely cheered back as they clung to floating wreckage. There were only 6 men left out of a crew of 1,032, all of them from the foretop. The gallant Hood was not among them. One of the lucky ones was Dannreuther, who had been flung clear by the blast. He recalled later, `I just waited for the water to come up to meet me, then I stepped out and began swimming...'

The only one mentioned being flung clear of the blast was this one crewman, nothing said about the others in such manner. In regards to this crewman's story about being flung clear of the blast it may be a case of it needs a bit more clarification. Who knows where he was actually flung from or to but it's his words so I don't see a problem with what he is saying.

The author is an Oxford educated emeritus at the University of Toronto and a veteran of the Royal Navy so I am taking a guess he knows what he is talking about when it comes to naval action.

Regardless of these comments made by the reviewer from London I still found this a well-written book and enjoyable to read. For a person who has not previously read about this battle I found this a very easy to read account.