Dead Presidents

Books read this week: Fighter (Len Deighton) 6/10, Personal Memoirs (Ulysses S Grant) 8/10

Sam Grant is one of America's more underrated presidents. His Personal Memoirs are (probably) the only American presidential memoirs written whilst under the influence of cocaine (to relieve the pain of the terminal throat cancer Grant was suffering from at the time) and they are extraordinarily lucid and easy to follow. According to the introduction, this facility to write quickly, concisely and unambiguously was one of Grant's major strengths as a commander.

I don't generally have much interest in American history, but I make an exception for the Civil War era, partly because it's status as the first truly modern war (i.e. the first major war where mass production and railroads were important) fascinates me, partly because it is the one brief, shining moment when the United States of America came close to being that city on the hill so many American politicians are convinced it is, and partly because, just occasionally, I like my moral conflicts to be black and white. There are very few wars in which, when viewed at the distance of a few decades (or longer) there is one side that was clearly right, and one side that was clearly wrong (I can think of only three off hand). There are even fewer where the right side won (two), and occasionally I like to treat myself by reading about them.

One thing that you notice when reading Grant's memoirs (and also the biography of Lincoln that'll be next week's book) is how egalitarian society was in the US (well, in the North, at any rate) during the early and middle years of the 19th century. It was, I think, mainly a consequence of the lack of a pre-existing hierarchy; the settlers in the West had to build their social structures from scratch, so there was a brief period (before those structures became ossified) when a rail splitter could become a president, and the son of a tanner could become Lieutenant General. This social flux, combined with the massive expansion of the Union army at the outbreak of war is what gives the armies that Grant led much of the feel of the revolutionary levies of the early French republic, or the Red Army during the Russian Civil War; egalitarian forces, composed of volunteers enthusiastic for their cause, led by officers promoted (or demoted) by merit not connections (although it took the Union army a little while to iron that one out). Such a force is frighteningly effective - something that Grant himself acknowledges when he says that an army of volunteers recruited during wartime is of a far higher standard than either peacetime volunteer forces or conscripts.

I think the most revealing anecdote in this book appears relatively early on; Grant is discussing an acquaintance who took part in a duel, and says (I'm paraphrasing here, slightly) "As for me, I have no time for duels. If I want a man dead, I'll just shoot the fucker. No messing about." It was this directness, and the willingness to see beyond society's expectations of what you should do that made him a great general.

One measures a general by their adversaries, and Grant's greatest opponent was Robert E Lee, a man who has accumulated over the years a glowing reputation. It is the same glamour that clings to Rommel and Hannibal; generals who fought well, ultimately lost, and were slightly less evil that their compatriots. It has to be said that for both Rommel and Lee, this wasn't hard; when you're fighting with people like Nathaniel Bedford Forrest and Himmler, it's not hard to look angelic in comparison.

The comparison between the Confederacy and the Third Reich is an interesting one - not least because the antebellum South is basically the society that Hitler was aiming for; agrarian and deindustrialised with a strong military tradition, with a large pool of slave labour. The political tactics of the two regimes were also similar; when reading about the 1840s and 50s in the US and the 1930s in Europe, it's like seeing the school bully pushing and pushing and pushing and then acting hurt and surprised when someone has the temerity to push back. The subversion of democracy by open and proudly acknowledged violence against their political opponents is also similar; it would be interesting to compare the assault on Charles Sumner with Hitler's silencing of the SPD and KPD.

It is also worth noting that it was precisely those features of the Confederate society that Hitler wanted to replicate which led to their defeat; nations that lack an industrial war machine tend to lose to those that do, no matter how courageous and martial their soldiers. In fact, another way of viewing the American Civil War is as the 14th century being administered a severe (although very much deserved) beating by the 20th.

I realise I've said a lot there without much discussion of the book itself; suffice to say, it is extremely readable, and very informative.

My second book, Fighter, is Len Deighton's foray into popular history. It's not a bad history of the Battle of Britain, although it perhaps concentrates overmuch on the technical (the climb rates and respective armaments of the planes involved, whilst they are in themselve interesting, are not massively relevant to the main narrative, and could have been relegated to an appendix) and not enough on the wider strategic picture - although I think part of Deighton's argument is precisely that no one in the Luftwaffe was interested in the wider picture (which is one of the major reasons why they lost). It is an extremely cynical take on the battle, with none of the senior officers on either side coming out well, although Deighton is probably right that Hugh Dowding, the man in charge of Fighter Command during the battle, was unfairly replaced afterwards. I do feel that his criticism of the RAF for keeping up morale by inaccurate figures for the number of aircraft shot down is overdone however. That said, the book is easy and quick to read, and one does get the feeling (quite correctly) that the battle was a "damn near run thing".