Norman Ferguson (2)

An interesting collection of historical titbits. It is easy enough to dip in and find something new and obscure. But it is not a good way to study what happened in the War. While some of the factoids are gathered together in a thematic section labelled "decisive events" the result is still too disjointed.

Most of the entries offer some numerical insight into the War, but a few seem so outlandish that it is necessary to ask whether they are accurate. This is a bit tricky. There are no show more footnotes or in-line references, and the bibliography is mostly secondary sources. Fortunately Google can help track down the origin of some of these. Here are three examples:

You learn that "400,000 ... pets were put down by the RSPCA in London in the first week of the war in order to save food." (p 32) This fact was covered in [b:The Great Cat and Dog Massacre: The Real Story of World War Two's Unknown Tragedy|34336273|The Great Cat and Dog Massacre The Real Story of World War Two's Unknown Tragedy (Animal Lives)|Hilda Kean|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487461075s/34336273.jpg|55405488]. Earlier sources include [b:How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War|1631055|How We Lived Then A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War|Norman Longmate|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1322659686s/1631055.jpg|1625214] and [b:Animals In War|618427|Animals In War|Jilly Cooper|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347442302s/618427.jpg|604820], both of which don't provide a source for their claim. I am deeply suspicious.

There were 451,742 "German military fatalities in January 1945" (p 203). The source for this is [b:Deutsche Militarische Verluste Im Zweiten Weltkrieg|6799265|Deutsche Militarische Verluste Im Zweiten Weltkrieg|Rudiger Overmans|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1394998305s/6799265.jpg|26091273] by [a:Rüdiger Overmans|1109661|Rüdiger Overmans|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. Overmans had official sponsorship and access to personnel records but I am immediately cautious about a number with this degree of precision when Germany was collapsing - while numbers at the start of the War are rounded to the nearest thousand.

Finally, "A US army report found that in combat only one in four American soldiers fired their weapons" - hear was a number I had heard of. This was famously the conclusion of [a:S.L.A. Marshall|757354|S.L.A. Marshall|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1335277537p2/757354.jpg] (see [b:Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War|789859|Men Against Fire The Problem of Battle Command in Future War|S.L.A. Marshall|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1335282686s/789859.jpg|775844]). Most historians think Marshall just invented his statistics.

Of course, nothing in Ferguson's book gives a sense of these problems. show less