Giles Milton

There are at least two Britains. One is cricket and public schools and the old boys network. The other are hard bastards who ruled the world through merciless force applied to vulnerable places: knives in kidneys, windpipe strikes, kicking them while they're down. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is about the latter Britain, an oddly balanced account of the Special Operations Executive during World War 2.

Milton makes his protagonists come alive, particularly Colin Gubbins, with his show more faith that a good saboteur could do more destruction in a single strike than a fortnight of bombing raids. Gubbins organized a secret army that blended the bored children of the nobility with street toughs and patriotic exiles from occupied Europe. They truly did set Europe ablaze!

Milton has a breezy and delightful narrative style, which comes through strongest on the accounts of the great raids: destroying the docks at St. Nazaire, the attack on the Norwegian heavy water plant vital to the Nazi A-bomb, and my new favorite, Operation Postmaster, a piratical cutting-out operation against a spy ship near the African Island of Fernando Po. Milton also has a love of the back office, and the madcap inventors who designed limpet mines, sticky bombs, precision time fuses, and all sorts of specialized Q-branch sabotage devices. I have to give credit to a ploy to replace the lubricant on an SS division's tank transporter rail cars with carborundum right before D-Day as an exceptional use of applied science.

This is a popular history, not a comprehensive work, but it's delightfully written and a worthy addition to anyone's library of dirty tricks. And for disclosure, I won this book in a Goodreads contest. show less

Popular history about the first 60 years of the honourable East India Company, focusing on the Dutch-English conflict over supremacy in the spice trade originating from the Banda islands.

The title is a misnomer. The said Nathaniel (Courthope) only played a minor (and ineffectual, albeit heroic) role in the struggle over Run island (one of the smallest of the six Banda spice islands). In the end the writer makes a plea for celebrating Nathaniel for his heroic, but futile, resistance to Dutch show more supremacy over Run island and its inhabitants, because ultimately an exchange was agreed between New Amsterdam (present-day New York) and Run island. This exchange supposedly gave the British the better end of the deal (if we ignore the subsequent American war of Independence and loss of British suzerainty over their American colonies). This is a typical case of imposing logics that only make sense with hindsight, but hardly influenced the exchange at the time.

Moreover, Milton presents Nathaniel’s struggle as one of British loftiness over crude Dutch extractionism – civilization over suppression. While such a view is refreshing, when contrasted with the dominant narrative on the Dutch East India Company (VOC), it is equally misleading – the British Empire was hardly less dominating or extractionist than its Dutch version. And ultimately New York and its inhabitants rose against British Imperialism in the name of freedom and civilization. So in the long run Milton’s argument backfires.

Yet, the fact that Courthope struck a reasonable deal with the inhabitants of Run stands. What we do not know, but can reasonably suppose, is that the more inclusive and autonomous aspects of that deal would have fallen victim to the God of colonial Greed in the long run.

What I ultimately take from this book, is a better understanding of the initial failure of the East India Company, which almost ceased to exist in 1657 (one hundred years before the unexpected British victory at Plassey, Bengal, which secured the ascent of the British Raj). Ultimately it was the backing of King Charles II and an extension of the mandate of the East India Company, to include local rule, military empowerment and the use of force, that explain its success after 1657 (one could argue that the British finally managed to copy the lethal mix of powers that made the Dutch East India Company so successful). In light of these changes, one may wonder whether the inhabitants of Run would have been better off under British rule. Milton avoids such painful, reflective questions. Rather than probing the viciousness of both the Dutch and British colonial projects, Milton prefers a gung-ho, white-supremacist adventure narrative. Go and read Amitav Ghosh for a very different narrative on the Nutmeg’s curse! show less

In 1939, Churchill brought together a group of six men whose job was to fight "dirty," as it became clear that guerrilla warfare and innovative weapons might be the only way to beat Hitler. This group of out-of-the-box thinkers used everything from hard candies that dissolved in ocean water to higher mathematics to design bombs and plots that would foil Hitler's plans.
Although at times I felt the book gets bogged down in the bureaucracy of it all (I'd start skimming at the details of who show more hired whom), there are other places where the book reads like a series of daring, bizarre escapades. My favorite account, toward the end, was about a small group of men who parachuted into Norway to destroy a heavy water plant that Hitler would have used to build an atomic bomb. The fact that they landed in a dense blizzard, then (by sheer luck) literally bumped into a solitary hut that sheltered them for four days until the blizzard ended, confounded Nazi resistance, found their resistance counterparts, scaled a huge cliff, on top of which stood the factory, and managed to set off the bombs and escape without significant injury is ... well, it could be a GREAT movie.
What also fascinated me was that the notion of "(un)gentlemanly warfare" in 1939 was produced discursively, in an argument on the Letters page of the London *Times*. One writer claimed that the sword was the only weapon appropriate for a gentleman, as it gave both fellows a chance and made it a "sporting affair." But--another writer pointed out--did it really matter if one cut the enemy's jugular with a sword or a bayonet? This book spends some time tracing the process by which the English eventually acknowledged that Hitler was no longer playing by rules that governed earlier wars. As I read, I had some compassion for Chamberlain; he didn't want to acknowledge that difference--perhaps because it suggested many other kinds of loss. The very definitions of words such as fairness and justice and decency were changing.
I stole this book from my husband's nightstand after we began watching ATLANTIC CROSSING on PBS. I found this book a good companion to the series, which begins in Norway in 1939 and follows the Crown Princess of Norway to America, where she influences FDR's thoughts and policies on the war. I would recommend to fans of WWII true history and of books such as Eric Larson's THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE. show less

Most books I've read regarding D-Day breezed through so quickly that you really didn't get a chance to feel the human element of the battle....this book absolutely covers that. Replete with actual interviews and detailed overviews (including the backgrounds of some that perished), Soldier, Sailor, Frogman, Spy, Airman, Gangster, Kill or Die has everything you can possibly want. Main battles, small battles, Allied and German point of views, and a lot of other subjects touched upon that most show more D-Day related books haven't or don't cover. I learned so much from this book that I previously had no idea about. Giles Milton does a fantastic job of letting the reader know about the objectives, but of the personnel carrying out these objectives. The ghosts of D-Day would be proud to read this book knowing someone like Mr. Milton took the time and care to portray the scared but brave men (on both sides) that fought this battle. Kudos!!! show less