Vienna in summer

<<Museum visit>>

I took a day off to visit the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Wien in early August. The rise, decline and the fall of the Habsburg Empire are all there; from the Ottoman invasions of Austria to the wars of the 19th century, fought as the Empire was slowly but steadily heading for its final extinction.

This is a museum anyone interested in military history should visit. And better allow at least two days. It took me half day just to go through the Ottoman period quickly - if you wish to examine all contemporary engravings, drawings and war reports, you might need much more time.

Yes, the Austrians had a navy. They always maintained a riverine navy on the Danube; and at the heyday of the empire, they had access to the Adriatic too.

And this is the car that started the war to end all wars.

Now, in front of the museum, a bunch of re-enacters were demonstrating their art of artillery.

Air power!

Lest we forget...

75 years ago, a new era in warfare began.

On July 7th, 1937, a clash between the Chinese and the Japanese forces at the Marco Polo Bridge, in north of the Chinese capital, Beijing, sparked off an all-out war between China and Japan. The Japanese, one of the winners of WW1, had built a new colony in northern China, by setting up a puppet regime nominally headed by the last emperor of the Manchurian dynasty. 

The Japanese were not seeking a head-on war with the Chinese. For their worst enemy was international communism. Japan itself had been threatened by a possible socialist disturbance - Japan's colonisation of northern China was meant to be a solution to provide place to settle to the jobless masses in Japan.

When a war broke out with the Chinese in 1937, they were thinking in terms of 'punitive expedition' to punish the Chinese wrongdoers, which reflects their self-belief that they were the leader of East Asia. The Chinese had other ideas, and refused to give in. This led to an all-out assault on China proper in August and eventually, later in the same year, to the attack on Shanghai and Nanking, the then Chinese capital.

This should have been a typical colonial warfare - only that the Japanese picked a nation more advanced compared with other countries in Asia and Africa colonised by leading European powers in the previous century. Asia was about to bounce back, and the Japanese, the latecomer to the imperial game, missed the sign of a Chinese recovery.

Frustrated Japanese resorted to something new in warfare: aerial bombing. Of course this was not their invention.

Only ten years after the airplane was invented by the Wright brothers, WW1 broke out. Naturally, all warring nations used this new invention. Initially for reconnaissance. Then they mounted a machine gun on a plane so opposing planes cd shoot at each other. Some big planes were built, for the purpose of dropping bombs. Still, this was technology in infancy and no one was sure how warfare might be changed because of the introduction of air power.

When the Iraqis revolted against the British in 1926, the British bombed some Iraqi civilians, to the consternation of the public. Yet, military people all over the world already believed that this was the face of future warfare: terror bombing to attack enemy at home front psychologically.

So, fast forward to 1937. In April, the German air force conducted a historical experiment in Spain, during its civil war. Supporting the fascist general, Franco, the German Luftwaffe bombed a Basque town of Guernica in a deliberate attempt to terrorise its inhabitants. It is believed that more than 1,500 people were killed in one day's bombing. Thanks to Pablo Picaso's famed painting depicting this new terror from above, this one's got much publicity.

The Japanese, too, from the summer of 1937, progressively entangled in an endless war in China, bombed Chinese cities indiscriminately, in a desperate attempt to break Chinese resistance. Bombings in Shanghai, Nanking and Chongqing shocked the world.

The fact was, most people simply assumed that this would be how wars would be fought in the years following the end of WW1, and did not think much about what it would be like to be at the receiving end of bombing. The Chinese themselves bombed the Japanese forces in Shanghai; the Japanese were relentless attacking Chinese civilians. When WW2 broke out two years later, it only became clear that the US and Britain were also preparing for this form of warfare, building big bombers such as the Lancaster bomber and the B-17. They would simply out-bomb the Axis powers, building larger bombers in larger numbers. WW2 was indeed a war of bombing aimed at destroying enemy's industrial capacity to wage wars and both military and civilian morale, in which both sides were guilty parties.

One lesson learnt is that you cannot destroy enemy's morale by dropping bombs. The Chinese proved that in 1937-38; so did the Germans in 1943-45. The Japanese public did not go out begging the government to end war in 1945 either, even after two atom bombs were used. It was the emperor who decided that he could not tolerate to lose more people to this form of warfare.

After the Cold War mercifully failed to produce a single casualty to nuclear bombing, we still live in an uncertain world. More has been learnt about the use of air power and now air power is used in more measured ways. Yet, as the Iraqi wars in 1990/1 and 2003ff attest, the use of air power inevitably produce civilian victims. Plus, looking at civil wars fought in many countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the idea of air power as a terror weapon is still alive and well, and this is the world that began 75 years ago.

The fall of the Roman Empire.. again

The year 2012 has turned out to be quite eventful for anyone studying history of the Roman Empire. Its major provinces are in serious trouble. Especially Egypt and Syria, the most important and prosperous provinces are in turmoil. What is so striking is that they were in the same sort of turmoil in the late antique and byzantine periods of the Roman Empire.

Egypt was renowned for its violent politics. The city of Alexandria was a scene of violent confrontations between various social, ethnic and religious groupings, in search of ultimate power and control. The native Egyptians, who were often recognised as heretic Christians (and they would become Coptic Christians) against the 'pagans', i.e., Greco-Macedon ruling elite. And Romano-Byzantine state church, or, orthodoxy trying to suppress heretic Christians, including these Egyptian churches, who saw Jesus simply as God. Plus the Jews and other minorities were hardly silent witnesses to these volatile scenes, participating in violent attacks on rival groups with zest.

[Tahir Square]

Now, Egypt is again divided between various sections and they found religious expressions. Moderate Muslims; Fundamentalist Muslims; Coptic minorities, etc. Like the Romano-Byzantine rulers, the military somehow keeps tabs on these elements, but not always.

[A street clash in Cairo ... But this could easily be a street fight in Alexandria in Byzantine times!]

In any case, both in ancient and modern times, Egypt's geographical position has something to do with it. In the context of the Roman world, Egypt was a hub of trade connecting Africa and Asia; also maritime trade routes of the Indian Ocean (via the Red Sea) and the Mediterranean. As such, Greeks and Jews were always keen on making Egypt their bases of operation. For the Romans, too, Egypt was a source of grain and money, as it were. The ruling elite represented the more international and commercial elements in the ancient world; whilst in the countryside, the descendants of those who had built the pyramids were seething with resentment to those 'upstarts'. Consequently, though they accepted Christianity, they developed their own ideas of Jesus' divinity, giving birth to their own version of the religion. This caused so much trouble. 

Today, too, the modern nation-state of Egypt has been shaped by European colonial empires, especially Britain and France, who were eager to take over the Indian Ocean-Mediterranean trade routes. Though their influence waned by the disaster of the Suez Crisis in 1956, just by looking at the uniform of the Egyptian military, you can tell how Britain, for example, influenced how the state of Egypt was built.

Now Syria. Syria was the point of contact with the rival Persian Empire, which encompassed Irak and Iran. As such, it was not only a frontline province in wartime but also a great emporium for the ancient world economy. Cities like Antioch was a major trading centre and counted as one of the most populous cities of the ancient world. Naturally, inhabitants of Syria, especially those who lived much closer to the border regions, had conflicting loyalties for obvious reason of self-preservation. Simply because you've got either the Roman or Persian overlord now, that does not mean you will next year.

Amazingly, Syrian loyalties are as sharply divided as in Roman times even today. Unlike in Egypt, where the military acted opportunistically as the mood of the populace changed, Syrians were either clearly pro-Assad or anti.

Now Syria is officially in a civil war. Fourteen centuries after Egypt and Syria dropped out of Roman polity and became incorporated in the newly created Arab Caliphate, we are still seeing the same sort of political scenes there.

Names change, but geopolitics remains constant.

War Memorial Maritime Museum, Kobe, Japan (visit)

In the course of my research on the obscure history of Japanese merchant marines during WW2, I visited War Memorial Maritime Museum in Kobe in May.

Kobe is one of the greatest port cities in Japan, perhaps next only to Yokohama. The city had been hit by a major earthquake in 1995, which destroyed half the historic waterfront district with trade houses, warehouses and offices. I saw that the whole area had been beautifully restored and re-developed. The museum is housed in the Kansai district headquarters, Japanese Seamen's Union.

The museum is about forgotten sailors who made ultimate sacrifices during WW2. They were probably the least responsible for the outbreak of war and yet paid much higher prices than the rest of Japanese population. (The militarist army officers, who were perhaps most responsible, were often recruited out of farming communities. And of course, very few seamen and fishermen became politicians...) Figures vary, but the safe estimate is that roughly half the seamen who participated in war lost their lives. Considering that even the suicidal Japanese army lost only 20% or so, this is an amazingly high figure. (Sure, in isolated defensive positions such as Iwo Jima, the Army suffered a virtually 100% loss rate; yet the main bulk of the Japanese Army in China, numbering more than a million, were safe and sound until the Soviets attacked them. Even then, it was only a small number of die-hards who fought to the last man. Many chose to flee; many were captured alive either by the Soviets or Communist Chinese.) To add insult to injury, the Japanese government and the military did not even acknowledge their sacrifices.

This museum was opened only in August, 2000. When I visited there, hoping to use documents and books, I was greeted by an old man whom I first mistook for a visitor. He explained that several retired seamen look after the museum. But he had no personal experience of war: all seamen who actually fought WW2 and survived are now simply too old. Some journalists are trying to get their stories, but they can no longer speak coherently or remember details from 70 years ago. The war is fading from people's memory now.

I got as-a-matter-of-fact records of what ships were lost during the war. Stats are rather confused, and I kept encountering different figures for the numbers of lost ships and seamen. There was even a set of data including ships and men lost due to mines laid during the war even after the cessation of hostilities, inflating these figures a lot. But safe to say that at least 3,500 ships were sunk and more than 60,000 seamen who did not belong to the army or the navy lost their lives; plus more than 170,000 'passengers', that is, both civilian and military personnel on board civilian ships, died at sea.

On the other hand, among the book collections, there were several collections of personal accounts, which are full of emotional, in your face type of telling of experience of war. They do not describe particulars of their last voyages - I felt a bit helpless, as I could not get much information on their dates, course of the ships or losses suffered in American attacks. It does not matter - to them, the story was simple: they sailed out, headed for some south Pacific island, knowing that it was infested with Americans, and then suddenly, the ship would explode with or without warning. The sailor would find himself in the water, and, if he was lucky enough, he'd be plucked out of water by an escort ship. He'd feel even sorry for surviving, as very few were lucky to be rescued; some cursed the escorting warship, who turned tail and bailed ('too dangerous to linger'). Most stories follow this line. The rest is their personal thoughts and what song they sang with their shipmates, etc. etc. Not very helpful for fact finding research mission of mine, but, their emotional responses to the impossible situation from which they could not extricate themselves is a very important part of this sorry story in itself.

The Japanese are often very self-absorbed, self-gratiating type of people; during the war, they considered themselves as warrior heroes that you might encounter in epic novels and movies depicting the world before writing was invented. So, they looked down on people - friend and foe alike - who were not 'warriors'. The idea of protecting civilians was unthinkable. To us moderns, fortified with theories of war, this is utterly astonishing. The whole point of fighting war is to protect your women and children; the rationale for navy is to protect merchant shipping so that your nation's commercial and economic health would not suffer in war. Both the British Royal Navy and the US Navy were built for the purpose of commerce protection at sea, and went on to become greatest navies in history as their nations' economy expanded. Yet the Japanese totally missed or just ignored this. To them, the modern armed forces were some sort of prestigious, luxury items to acquire as their country got richer and more powerful. As if buying a Mercedes Benz or something. They did not think much about exactly what they were trying to accomplish with such expensive purchases. Winning a battle for the sake of winning is the only thing, and to that end, they were even willing to use civilians as human shields (as witnessed in Okinawa) so that the 'warriors' could get their satisfaction of killing more enemy.

Given this culture, it is not so surprising that the Japanese navy failed to provide protection with merchant ships and transports; the army men treated these Japanese sailors worse than they do dogs. The old man at the museum told me that the sailors in wartime were in fact told that their lives came after those of warhorses and carrier pigeons.

Unlike the Allies, the Japanese failed to develop an effective and efficient auxiliary fleet. Plus intense rivalries between the army and the navy meant that there was little coordination between them for sea transport operations and even amphibious assaults. (One destroyer captain effectively said, he didn't want to die uselessly while his destroyer squadron, which was supposed to sink American warships with their torpedoes, accompanied slow and cumbersome army transports!) It is only because the Allied powers had little defence in their colonies that the Japanese succeeded during the opening months of the war. Even then, the counter-attacking US and British fighter planes had field days, sinking transport ships in droves. So, when the Allies gained an upper-hand from the late 1942, what the Japanese seamen had to go through was nothing but sheer hell.

Reading accounts by these sailors, what strikes me is that they hated the Japanese leaders as well as the enemy. They naturally hated American bombers and submarines for sinking them with impunity; whenever they managed to down an American plane, they would feel that some justice was finally done. But these sailors resented the Japanese military guys almost equally, who did not bother even to give them any weapon to fight back and treated them as being expendable. Some big transport ships got some AA guns, and often they made an air raid painful for the Americans. Yet, so many Japanese ships were without any anti-air or anti-submarine weapons. Once attacking American warplanes realised that, they would lesuirely strafe from top mast level.  Japanese sailors could even see faces of the pilots clearly. They felt it is not just their ship that was being destroyed but their dignity and pride too.

After the war, their effort and sacrifice were forgotten. The media does not give much attention to these sailors either. Even History Channel and National Geographic, running documentary programmes about many different aspects of WW2, failed to cover the Japanese merchant seamen (as far as I know; though I must admit I don't watch every single episode of History or National Geographic TV!), even though the Battle of the Atlantic got a lot of airtime.

This new museum in Kobe was dedicated to the memories of these forgotten seamen, but, there hasn't been any high-profile campaign to raise public awareness even in Japan. The old sailors do not seem to think worthwhile, when the younger generations of the Japanese don't know about even the atomic bombing of Japanese cities and don't care, or, perhaps because it is just too late for changing their lives with better public recognition. But they are trying to preserve the memory in a quiet, very Japanese way. One historian has been building model ships of passenger liners, fishing boats and cargo ships that were sunk during the war, by the request of the relatives of seamen lost onboard. There are nearly a hundred now.

In the museum, the main display shows hundreds of pictures of the lost ships.

Sadly, very few people seem to be visiting this place. Just after the opening of it in 2000, some school visits were organised, but, soon, the museum has been forgotten. The day I paid my visit, there were only three other visitors. (But then, it was just after the May holiday weekend ended...)

The website is:
www.jsu.or.jp/siryo/
Unfortunately it is all in Japanese, but you get pictures of Japanese ships being sunk from the US National Archives on this site.

Waterloo

Recently I visited Waterloo, Belgium. Given its significance in modern European history, it is a bit sup rising that it is a quiet, unassuming place. To get there was simple enough: just 20 minute train ride from Brussels. The train station of Waterloo displays nothing to indicate that this was a place of historical significance, so it is easy to miss it. Probably because my French is so elementary, but I saw no sign saying, the battlefield this way or anything like that.

And I saw very few visitors too. I guess unless you're a history buff, there is no other attractions to entice you to visit this place, since the town has not really developed as a tourist town. Apart from Tourist Information that dominates the main crossroad of the town, there is no major landmark here. On the opposite side is Wellington Museum, which was Duke of Wellington's Headquarters during the battle.

To get to the site of battle, you have to take bus route W. The bus driver didn't speak English, so make sure you get directions at Tourist Information. The bus stop isn't even marked as the Waterloo battlefield; they'd tell you that when you will see Esso petrol station on the right, signal for stop. On the other side of Esso was a Japanese restaurant too (as of early April, 2012).

The battlefield is basically a farmland with some villages dotted around. I took a battlefield tour, on a dusty converted lorry. I don't recommend this to anyone except die-hard military buffs, really. It is bumpy, dusty and uncomfortable; views are obscured by transparent plastic sheets and all you see is, well, just a farmland anyway. You can see some key farm estates during the battle, such as La Haie Sainte, but, unless pointed out by commentary, it is not easy to tell which is which.

Perhaps it might be worthwhile to take a tour around the battlefield, if you are interested in military tactic. You can see why Wellington chose this spot and how the terrain was against the French. From the British position, it is easier to survey the whole ground, whereas for the French, what is going on on the British side was not at all clear. The famous, final charge of the Old Guard was stopped by the British suddenly rising up and letting loose volley after volley of rifle fire. They were utterly surprised by this, and you can see how that was the case. (Assuming the terrain hasn't change a lot since 1815.)

A day in Yokosuka Naval Base

I must admit I love warships. They look pretty (according to some, battleships are sexier and prettier than beautiful young women!); they sort of symbolise technological and industrial prowess of your nation, especially when those warships are actually manned and operated.

Back in the 1990s, proliferation of nimble warships in smaller nations was talked about. When, for example, Thailand became the first Asian nation to possess an aircraft carrier after WW2, that came as a surprise. But do we hear anything about a Thai naval task force, with a dozen fighter airplane, dominating seas of Southeast Asia? China’s growing naval power is a worry, especially when she acquired an ex-Soviet aircraft carrier. But it is absolutely no threat to US naval forces at the moment; if anything, the American navy is more worried about land-based anti-aircraft carrier missile China is reputedly developing. So, if you possess a real, functioning navy, that means you should be proud of your country!

But, recently, working on naval strategy in the Pacific, I realised that one thing that has been totally ignored or at best underappreciated is the Japanese merchant marine. Their sacrifice was immense. While Japan’s armed forces got something like 20% of their personnel killed, the Japanese merchant marine lost staggering 80%(ish). The Japanese were obsessed with set-piece naval combat with big warships back then and so protection of merchant ships and tankers in wartime was not even an issue. But the US navy ruthlessly attacked these types of ships to strangulate Japan.

It is rather strange that, while it did occur to the Japanese to target the weakest point of the US, i.e., the public that was unwilling to fight a savage war across the Pacific unless the US mainland itself was under threat (Japan’s suicide attacks were partly designed to frighten the US public), it did not occur to them that the Americans would surely do the same to Japan.

Japan’s weakest link is of course its geography. It is an island nation that is not self-sufficient, especially when it comes to running its wartime economy. It relied on imports for most materials, especially oil, without which, no matter how good your fighter planes or battleships are, they could be rendered useless.

(Source: US National Archives)

American submarines had a field day in 1944-45 (though they too suffered higher percentage of casualties themselves than other branches of the US navy), sinking Japanese ships in droves. Unlike German U-boats, they did not encounter any serious resistance. The Japanese failed to come up with any effective counter to submarine threats. By the end of the war, the Japanese merchant marine was completely wiped out. Any surviving ships were blockaded in ports.

And so sailors, who were forcibly conscripted by military, paid the price of incompetence of Japanese high command. They were resentful but powerless. As they see it, the ‘proper’ warriors were just sitting on their asses, waiting for the so-called decisive moment, to win the war in a single battle. That never came. The biggest battleship, the Yamato, was nicknamed the Yamato Hotel, partly because, as the flagship of the entire Japanese navy, it’s got luxurious staterooms for admirals and other VIPs, but also during the war, this monstrous ship was mostly just cowering in ports, entertaining admirals and governors. Ostensibly she was waiting for the right moment to use its massive 18-inch guns, but, in the eyes of common sailors, that’s totally nuts.

In the meantime, transport ships were sent to reinforce the front, only to be sunk by American air and sub forces. Many Japanese army divisions were literally sunk even before they got to the front. Almost no Allied soldiers suffered from such fate in the Pacific (though some Allied PoW were lost while being transported in Japanese ships, sunk by US submarines). Often they could not even hit back. Some ships were equipped with AA guns so they might shoot down a few attack planes. But against subs, they were utterly helpless, especially at night. They got escort ships, but only the most important and largest convoys got destroyer escort. Most escort ships were inadequate and small sloops and frigates, no better than coast guard patrol vessels. They had to be extremely lucky to counterattack US subs to sink them.

The voices of these helpless sailors were never heard. They often invoke the example of the British, who, in contrast to the Japanese, recognised the importance of protection of merchant ships in the Atlantic and went on to defeat the U-boats, in order to attack the then Japanese military leadership. But, apart from a handful of books written by merchant seamen who served and miraculously survived the war, not much is done to raise public awareness of this sad history.

So, back to peaceful Yokosuka, the naval base shared by the US and Japanese allies. It is full of warships, beautifully on display for the benefit of tourists. I was one of the tourists! But I see no memorial of war dead, let alone for those merchant seamen. It makes me wonder why we cannot appreciate their services – after all, in peacetime too, without them, our economy would ground to a halt. Security at sea is something we should be more concerned with. If you look at history, fall of empires often coincide with the demise of their sea commerce. That’s a lesson we should not forget.

100 years since ...

the sinking of the Titanic! It is amazing that we have a major sinking of a liner only three months short of the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic (15 April, 1912). [Incidentally, the Greek version of the previous post has been published by Historical Quest.]

I have no technical data, so I can only talk about personal impressions, but these ships look so top-heavy. 15 decks jam-packed with passengers who are heavy from over-eating with their 23kg suitcases each, plus numerous pieces of furniture, household equipment, computers, delivery wagons, TV screens, wiring etc etc. When I took my mother for one of those cruises, even she (with absolutely no knowledge of maritime affairs or marine technology) instinctively felt that there is something inherently unsafe. She kept asking if the ship is really, really safe. I foolishly kept answering it is OK, there must be a heavy enough ballast at the bottom so the ship is well balanced.

Guess I was totally wrong. I had no idea that a liner could capsize so easily!

Here is one of the Costa liners, which is similar to Costa Concordia that sunk:

Incidentally, I took this picture at Rhodes, where there is a medieval castle under archaeological excavation in the port.

Our own cruise liner, which is of the similar size, looked like this:

See how top-heavy these ships are. I thought they only looked that way, but maybe they are indeed of unstable design. Very worrying indeed.

So what is the morale? A hundred years ago, we learnt that a passenger liner must have sufficient number of life boats and some sort of early warning system for any obstacles ahead. Radar since became a standard item for big ships. This time, I suppose, we need to think of a system that would enable passengers to escape even if the ship is toppling over. Perhaps active sonar (with strong pings!) might be fitted for detection of underwater obstacles? But then, a fully automated and computerised system that can totally override a panicking captain and crew might improve marine safety dramatically!