Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/April 2025/Book reviews
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20 Battles - Evert Kleyhans and David Brock Katz |
- By Nick-D
20 Battles: Searching for a South African Way of War 1913-2013 is an investigation of enduring trends in the South African Army's approach to warfare. As the title indicates, it's focused on 20 battles ranging from the use of the military to supress industrial strikes in 1913 through to the 2013 Battle of Bangui. The book's authors are academic military historians.
I picked this book up on a recent trip to South Africa in the hopes of gaining some insights into the country's military history. Given the authors' credentials and the book's high production values (more on this later), it was a much more serious looking work than most of the others I saw in bookshops, which tended to be glamorisations of the Apartheid era special forces or memoirs by soldiers and mid-ranking officers. Overall, I'm very pleased with my investment here. I started this book with little knowledge of South African military history, and ended it feeling I had a decent initial understanding of how the Army had evolved over time. Unfortunately there's little coverage of the South African Air Force and virtually nothing on the Navy.
The approach the authors take across 20 Battles is admirable. It starts and ends with thematic chapters that discuss trends in South African military history and try to identify what this means for the country's military doctrine. Each of the book's other chapters are focused on a battle. These have been selected to illustrate key developments, and include a mix of victories and defeats for South Africa. The course of each battle is clearly described and each chapter ends with about a page worth of analysis. All chapters have a high quality map illustrating the battle, which I found invaluable given my limited knowledge and the little known locations the book covers. Some of the chapters also include well chosen photos. The book doesn't include footnotes (on the questionable grounds that it's intended as a popular history), but each chapter has a useful bibliography. The authors conclude that the South African Army's strength is manoeuvre warfare and that it tends to perform poorly when required to fight in other ways.
There are some limitations though. The main one is that while the authors acknowledge that the outcomes of many battles were influenced by political decisions and others had political impacts, this intersection with military tactics isn't really explored. For instance, the chapter on the 1941 Battle of Sidi Rezegh partially attributes the destruction of the 5th Infantry Brigade to the British separating the brigades of its parent division (with one being in East Africa while the others were in North Africa!). Why the South African government allowed this isn't explained, which is a key issue given that the Australian and (from memory) New Zealand governments prohibited their divisions from being split up by the British in this way. Likewise, the chapter on the 1978 Battle of Cassinga notes that the attack was a political disaster for South Africa due to allegations of atrocities by the troops involved, but what this involved and whether the allegations had merit is not discussed: the focus instead is on the planning and tactics used in the battle. The book's other flaw is that there's a degree of repetition in some chapters - better editing would have helped, as some chapters feel a little rushed.
Overall, this is a very worthwhile book that provides a serious discussion of South African military history.
Publishing details: Kleynhans, Evert; Katz, David Brock (2023). 20 Battles: Searching for a South African Way of War 1913-2013. Johannesburg: Delta Books. ISBN 978-1-92824-822-4.
Borneo 1945 - Angus Konstam |
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- By Nick-D
This is a short history of the Borneo campaign of 1945, in which Australian and US forces landed at several points on the island during the last months of World War II. The book is the 406th volume in Osprey Publishing's 'Campaign' series, and uses its standard structure and 96 page length. Angus Konstam is one of Osprey's generalist authors, and seems to be responsible for a high proportion of their recent works on World War II.
Due to the short duration of the campaign and limited amount of fighting, it is well suited to Osprey's format. Konstam provides a good summary of the main battles of the campaign, with a focus on the ground fighting between Australian and Japanese troops. This includes an interesting attempt to explain why the Japanese were able to provide a good defence in some locations but rapidly collapsed or fled in other areas. Importantly, Konstam notes that a key issue is that where the Japanese could retreat they did - most notably in the Battle of Balikpapan. The book is illustrated with excellent maps, including what are probably the best of the 3D battle scenes that are always included in this Osprey series that I've seen. It ends with an interesting chapter on the state of the battlefields today that indicates that Konstam has visited Borneo recently.
There are some significant shortcomings though. The main one is that while Konstam has done a decent job of researching the campaign, he's obviously not an expert on it. As a result, he doesn't really cover the background to why the campaign was launched and the debate over its value. He also makes a serious mistake by stating that the Borneo Campaign was the stepping stone to planned further landings in Java: this operation was vetoed by the Australian government, with the result that the Balikpapan operation in particular served no purpose and was opposed by many senior Australian officers. He also doesn't make it clear how weak the strategic rationales for the two other main operations were. There is no discussion of the impact of the campaign on civilians, despite Konstam noting that towns were bombarded for days at a time.
Unusually for Osprey, another problem with the book is its use of photos. Almost all the photos also appear in Wikipedia articles, and were presumably selected on that basis (perhaps a sign of Konstam rushing the book). The quality of the reproductions are often poor. None of the sources of the images are credited. While almost all are public domain Australian and US government images, I was very disappointed to see that File:Labuan WWII-Memorial.jpg was used without acknowledgement of its Creative Commons licence or the photographer. Osprey are usually pretty good with acknowledging the sources of images, so it's not clear why this information was omitted.
In summary, this is a useful introduction to this campaign, but a somewhat superficial one.
Publishing details: Konstam, Angus (2024). Borneo 1945: The Last Major Allied Campaign in the South-West Pacific. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4728-6224-2.
Recent external book reviews |
Gerolymatos, André (2019). Espionage and Treason in Classical Greece: Ancient Spies and Lies. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. ISBN 9781498583381.
- Lautens, James (March 2025). "Review of Gerolymatos, Andre. Espionage and Treason in Classical Greece: Ancient Spies and Lies". H-War, H-Net Reviews.
Goodall, Jim (2023). Nautilus to Columbia: 70 Years of the US Navy’s Nuclear Submarines. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 9781472856500.
- Bosbotinis, James (14 March 2025). "Nautilus to Columbia: 70 Years of the US Navy's Nuclear Submarines". The Naval Review.
Beck, Richard (2024). Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life. New York City: Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 9780593240229.
- Beckett, Andy (26 March 2025). "Homeland by Richard Beck review – how 9/11 changed the US for ever". The Guardian.
Scharre, Paul (2023). Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. New York City: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393866865.
- Nash, John (4 March 2025). "Land Power Library - Four Battlegrounds". Land Power Forum. Australian Army Research Centre.
Various recent books on espionage
- Ricks, Thomas E. (31 March 2025). "In Espionage and War, Secure Communication Is Key. Just Ask These Spies". The New York Times.
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