John Costello (1) (1943–1995)

The Pacific War: 1941 – 1945 covers WWII in the Pacific, from the preparations for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines to the dropping of the atomic bombs and the subsequent surrender. Preceding the narrative of combat operations is a 100 page (or so) geopolitical history of the western Pacific, where Costello introduces us to the players -- the United States, Japan, Britain, the Netherlands, China, Australia – and describes what each had at stake in the conflict and the show more historical animosities and alliances that defined their relationships.
That beginning section is a little slow, but interesting and very important to the story. Once the bullets fly the pace picks up, and the author gives us a brisk, thorough history of the conflict in 659 pages that seems shorter. It is fast-paced, but Costello introduces enough asides and anecdotes and crafts a sentence well enough that it is never tiring. He doesn't discount luck as a factor in events, to his credit, and pays adequate attention to how national character influenced military decisions.
Originally published in 1981, I read a 2009 re-issue that had some poor typesetting that garbled the text in a few places. Though annoying, that didn't really damage the experience, but it's worth noting that much information has been de-classified in the 30 years since the book was published and several volumes on the same, or overlapping, topics have come out reflecting more current scholarship. That fact doesn't effect the quality of this work, but you might want to plan on reading something more recent in addition to this one. show less

I finished the John Costello's The Pacific War. It is not hyperbole to say this is the best single volume history on the Pacific War.

At just under 600 pages of reading not including a fair amount of pictures and maps, John Costello has written the one volume history that all who are passionate about the Pacific War should read.

The book digs into all major operations and includes both Nimitz's and MacArthur's command as well as the CBI Theater, the bombers War and some inclusion of the show more submariner's war specifically on Japanese merchant shipping although I would say this is the weakest section of the war.

In addition the book gives ample discussion to the antecedents of the U.S. and Japanese relationship and the cause of war and a chapter at the end which goes into the revisionist history to apply blame for Pearl Harbor. In the end Costello follows the path that while the signs were there all the pieces of intelligence were never put together together to lead the military or civilian leadership to conclude that Pearl Harbor was a target. It blames some but not the preponderance of blame on General Short and Admiral Kimmel.

A 5 star read which I enthusiastically recommend. show less

My reactions to reading this in 1995.

An interesting collaboration between Costello, an English journalist/historian specializing in espionage history, and Tsarev, an officer with the KGB’s (now SVRR) Press Department.

The book details the career (and very little of the personal life since it is drawn almost entirely from KGB, FBI, CIA, and INS records) of Alexander Orlov, the most famous pseudonym of an NKVD officer thought to have defected from the Soviet Union in 1938. What this book show more reveals is that Orlov (in 1938 the head of Soviet activity aiding the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and on-site director of purges against Marxists Stalin regarded as competitors in Spain) merely fled Stalin’s mad purges of the NKVD and was, as the KGB files put it, a “non-returner” and not a defector. During his time in hiding in America from 1938 to 1973, he never revealed anything of value to the CIA or FBI interrogators though he wrote two books, one on Stalin’s crimes, the other on guerilla warfare and counter intelligence. He exposed only spy rings, operations, and agents already “blown” and nothing of what he did know which was quite a lot.

He helped organized the Rote Kapelle, Red Orchestra, the very successful NKVD spy ring in Nazi Germany till 1942. He founded most of the Oxford-Cambridge spy ring. He did not recruit Philby though he did tell Philby he was working for the Soviet Union and not just anti-fascists. I found the “Oxbridge” part of the book most interesting not only for its revelations as to how agents are recruited, motivated, and supervised and for showing that MI6 never caught all the ring’s members but also how it depicts the zeal with which its members embraced Communism as a religious faith for their alienated, spiritually vacant lives. It also showed how seductive Communism was to the rationalistic mindset, particularly among scientists, of Cambridge. I was also interested to see that not only was Communism fashionable in academic circles but fascism had its devotees in government. The lax security that afforded Donald Maclean such easy access to classified documents shows a typically British blindness regarding class. It was simply assumed that only gentlemen worked for the Foreign Office and, therefore, wouldn’t steal documents.

Orlov also knew of the effort to kill Trotsky and personally helped purge people in Spain. One can’t feel sorry for Orlov’s near death at the hands of Stalin. Like so many revolutionaries since the French Revolution, he thought he could ride the tiger and ignore or even approve of the bloodshed around him – until it became his turn. But Orlov cleverly evaded a trap for him and blackmailed Stalin and the NKVD by stating that, if he died, secret operations – like the Rote Kapelle, purges in Spain, and the “Oxbridge” ring – would be exposed. Stalin took no action against him. The blackmail letter, quoted here, does not explicitly make such a threat but it is heavily implied and certainly NKVD records show that’s how it was taken. Orlov never exposed those operations though pretending to be a defector. (The FBI suspected he was holding out and had ran assassination squads in Spain but couldn’t prove it.)

He died a dedicated communist and was described by one CIA officer as the single most versatile (he ran guerilla operations, counter-intelligence, and intelligence), powerful, and productive agents the Soviets produced. show less

This book was written in part to as a response to The Master Spy by Phillip Knightley. Costello claims Knightley went easy on Kim Philby.
Costello has a much more critical view of all the Cambridge spies than did Knightley. Almost all of Costello’s conclusions are stated as generous for their modesty and the reality was probably much more serious damage to intelligence services but covered up by the Intelligence services themselves, English government, as well as the crown.
This is a long show more book and could have been shorter but I enjoyed reading all of it, depressing as it was. Costello covers all of the spies but focuses on Anthony Blunt's career. Costello argues that Guy Liddell was probably the “grandfather spy” to all the rings operating out of British Intelligence agencies. Many good factual items in this book are scattered throughout. Mask of Treachery is an excellent source of information on methodology, sources, and tactics of WWII and Cold War espionage. The author is himself a Cambridge educated historian. show less